Building, Scaling, and Selling Home Service Businesses (Supercut)

Summary

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Owned and Operated – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Building, Scaling, and Selling Home Service Businesses (Supercut)

Host: John Wilson
Release Date: January 29, 2026

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Overview

This supercut episode of “Owned and Operated” delivers a curated set of the host's favorite conversations about building, scaling, and selling home service businesses—plumbing, electrical, and HVAC. John Wilson and guest voices unpack core topics ranging from the uncomfortable realities of growth, making acquisitions, and planning solid exits, to scaling up talent, company culture, organizational structure, decentralized management, and workforce development for future-proofing the trades.

The episode is packed with candid stories from experienced industry leaders, practical workforce insights, and actionable advice for anyone looking to grow a service business or plan a successful acquisition or exit.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Building with the End in Mind: Early Planning for Sale (00:33–09:07)

• Serial entrepreneur shares his journey from buying a business at age 25 with no business background, learning through mistakes (like not paying payroll taxes), to eventually scaling and selling multiple businesses.

• Importance of building a business with strong management, steady revenues, and profits to make it an attractive acquisition target.

• Quote:

  “Growth breaks the moment that your team can't keep up.”
  — John Wilson (01:04)

• Finding broken or bankrupt businesses and integrating them was a key growth method.

• Being involved in the foundation of ARS (American Residential Services) and building multi-location expertise.

• Post-sale career growth: being president of ARS, learning large-scale operations, then moving on to build and sell businesses repeatedly, effectively acting as “my own private equity shop.”

• Selling a business can lead to “getting paid to learn” from industry peers with larger platforms.

  Notable Quote:

  “I decided at that point I'm in the business building business. I'm not in the HVAC plumbing business. I build businesses and I sell them.”
  — Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur (06:37)

2. Adapting Acquisition Strategy to New Sectors (09:07–12:21)

• Transitioning from HVAC/plumbing rollups to the standby generator industry; different market dynamics and buyer landscapes.

• Private Equity (PE) interest is growing rapidly even in previously overlooked sectors.

• The importance of building market presence and scale before considering exit in a niche industry.

  Memorable Insight:

  “PE is all over Main Street… There’s a lot more competition for businesses in the generator space.”
  — Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur (11:23)

3. Scaling Leadership and Company Culture in a Distributed Organization (13:45–19:33)

• Challenges and learnings when a company grows from one location to over 30, and headcount into the thousands.

• Leadership struggles: as organizations get bigger, leaders interact directly with fewer team members, risking disconnected culture.

• Tools like internal podcasts (à la Chad Peterman) can reinforce communication and culture across branches.

• The organizational shift from “doing everything” to empowering regional/local leaders.

  Notable Quote:

  “I want our teams in the field to know they're part of a local organization that cares about them. I care about them deeply, but I don't get a chance to see them all the time.”
  — Operations Executive (16:28)

• Organizational structure: 5 divisions (West, Northeast, Southeast, Industrial, Service Organization), decentralizing leadership and operations to suit varied scale and focus areas.
  (See: 17:39–19:33)

4. Decentralization vs. Centralization (22:01–24:49)

• Decision-making about which functions to centralize (insurance, HR, compliance) and which to leave decentralized (P&L management).

• Empowered, decentralized teams perform better, with local leaders focusing on value-driving activities and back office/overhead centralized for efficiency.

  Key Insight:

  “They should have autonomy to make certain decisions, to drive the P&L. But the person that's going to drive the best P&L for you doesn't want to manage insurance… or deal with back office stuff.”
  — Operations Executive (24:17)

5. Workforce and Talent Strategy for the Trades (25:42–33:35)

• The importance of constantly recruiting and training techs, especially in smaller or less talent-rich markets.

• Value in hiring for soft skills and attitude over direct experience; invest in training over poaching “seasoned” but unfit hires.

• Training can be a multi-year process; pairing trainees with experienced techs in the field is now the norm.

• Keeping a “constant pipeline” is critical to counteract industry-wide labor shortages.

  Highlight:

  “You have to invest in the people. And does that take a lot more time…? Yeah, it takes a heck of a lot more time. But we find they're more apt to stay longer because we've invested so much into them.” — Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer (26:34)

• Emerging trends:

  • Growth in younger generations entering the trades, driven by platforms like TikTok dispelling four-year degree myths.
  • Recognition that trade careers offer high income and stability without college debt.

  Quote:

  “Hey, you want to make 100 grand at 25 and you can buy a house and you don't need college debt? Like, that's a hell of a pitch.”
  — John Wilson (30:31)

• The opportunity to recruit mid-career changers (30-40 year olds displaced by tech/AI changes).

6. The AI & Technology Factor (33:35–35:26)

• AI threatens some knowledge worker roles, but many trade jobs remain insulated—particularly plumbing, which is less subject to automation.

• AI may help with faster onboarding in complex trades (e.g., HVAC diagnostics via AR/AI), but hands-on jobs like plumbing are less likely to be displaced.

  Takeaway:

  • The trades are becoming a "next safe earning" opportunity as AI reshapes the job market.

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Growth breaks the moment that your team can't keep up.”
  John Wilson [01:04]

• “I decided at that point I'm in the business building business. I'm not in the HVAC plumbing business. I build businesses and I sell them.”
  Experienced HVAC Business Owner [06:37]

• “PE is all over Main Street.”
  Experienced HVAC Business Owner [11:23]

• “I want our teams in the field to know they're part of a local organization that cares about them… but I don't get a chance to see them all the time.”
  Operations Executive [16:28]

• “They should have autonomy to make certain decisions, to drive the P&L. But the person that's going to drive the best P&L for you doesn't want to manage insurance.”
  Operations Executive [24:17]

• “You have to invest in the people… they're more apt to stay longer because we've invested so much into them.”
  Trades Workforce Development Expert [26:34]

• “Hey, you want to make 100 grand at 25 and you can buy a house and you don't need college debt? Like, that's a hell of a pitch.”
  John Wilson [30:31]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Building with Exit in Mind & Scaling Stories: 00:33–09:07
• New Industry, Generator Sector & PE Trends: 09:07–12:21
• Scaling Leadership & Company Culture: 13:45–19:33
• Org Structure & Centralization Decisions: 22:01–24:49
• Workforce Development & Recruitment Talk: 25:42–33:35
• AI, Future of Work, & The Trades: 33:35–End

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Tone and Takeaways

The episode is delivered with a pragmatic, no-nonsense tone, blending real-world anecdotes with humility about lessons learned. Voices reflect both the strategic (“private equity shop” mentality) and the hands-on, people-driven aspects of the trades.

Listeners will leave with:

• Deep appreciation for long-term business planning and the value of building for an eventual exit.
• Fresh insights into the need for adaptive org structures as companies scale.
• Actionable ideas for workforce development and recruitment.
• Awareness of sector shifts—AI, cultural trends—and their impact on the trades.
• Encouragement to embrace decentralized leadership, foster local team connections, and never stop learning or training.

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For more actionable content on home service business growth, tune in weekly or visit ownedandoperated.com.

Transcript

[John Wilson]

What's up everybody? It is John Wilson from Owned and Operated. Over the course of January, February and March we are acquiring a couple businesses. So we're a few weeks into January, we've already bought two, we're about to bring on our third. So I'm super busy and because of that we are going to be our recording schedules a little bit messed up. So we have some super cuts of some of my favorite moments. Also stay tuned as we start dropping more information about the deals that we're doing and how we're thinking about acquisitions.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Was that always the plan with Gettle was. I mean it sounds like it probably was because it was your sixth one. So you had a sort of a road map of hey, I'm going to build this and then transact at some point. I know for folks like me that's this is our first one. So I think for us that journey is starting to come where it's like okay, I think we'll have to bring on money at some point. But when I set out I didn't have it in mind that it would be an exit. So how did you think about that from the get go?

[John Wilson]

Here's an uncomfortable truth. Growth breaks the moment that your team can't keep up. I know that finding good people fast is really hard. Especially in home services positions like hr, accounting, marketing, call center, it is hard to keep up. Quick Staffers helps home service companies build reliable virtual teams that actually understand the trades. Quickstaffers provides vetted remote staff who are pre trained on service titan and use best in industry sops. These are team members ready to integrate into your business on day one. Handling roles like customer service lead, follow up, scheduling support and more. We're actively hiring an offshore assistant controller right now through Quick Staffers. I can't recommend Quick Staffers enough. They've helped us scale our business without a headache. Head over to quickstaffers.com for more.

[Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur]

You know, I had been in it all my life. I bought the, bought a business when I was 25. I started going like I said a couple years in I got, you know, I, I got notified by the irs I didn't pay my payroll taxes and I said to the irs, the agent, I said what's payroll taxes? Because I was so green I didn't even know and you know, that kind of sent me on the journey and so I made a business plan at that point because at that point, you know, you, I was in a really tough situation but I really couldn't get out of it because you know, you can't discharge payroll taxes and bankruptcy if you went bankrupt, for instance, and you can't. And I owed people money that I bought the business from. And so I was like, okay, well, I can't be the stooge that just fails in two years. So I have to gut this out and figure it out. So I wrote a plan and the plan was like, okay, I gotta get through this. I'm gonna get through this and I'm gonna build a business and I'm gonna sell it. And I made the plan of what you have to do to sell it. You gotta have a management team. You have to have some steady revenues and profits, things like that. And then I said, no, I was young guy, like I was 26 or something. I said, I'm gonna sell for $1 million. You know, that was my goal, $1 million, $1 million. And I thought that was all the money in the world. But anyway, so I end up, you know, we put it together and, you know, I figure out, I create my email system and then I start buying either broken bankrupt or broken bankrupt or H vac businesses. Businesses where the guys are retiring. Guys retiring or struggling. Even old phone numbers from, you know, from companies that shut down are going to shut down. I'd gather up these phone numbers and I'd put them into the mix. And I started scaling my business by buying these inexpensive broken businesses. And. And I became good at it because I had fixed my own business and I figured out what the process is to. To build a business system and I documented it. And so it was easy for me just to go ahead and start organizing these companies and putting the routines in. I had the plan to sell, and then I started building them up. And I got to where I had three locations when I was about 30 years old in Las Vegas. And that's when Ars. Are you familiar with Ars? American Residential Services?

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Okay.

[Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur]

So that's when ARS was born. And they came to me and said, hey, what? You know, once you join our. Join our roll up, you can be a founding member. And so, you know, I was one of the, I don't know, five, six guys who got it started and then we built it. And I got, at that point the business was worth a lot more than $1 million. I think I got, you know, maybe five, six times that.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

But.

[Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur]

I went out and I executed my plan. So I was. I'm in my early 30s and I sell the business to Ars. And I'm in that world for a while. And so I had hit My goal, I wanted to build it and sell it and go figure out something else to do because I hadn't done anything else all my life. I thought maybe I wanted to be a, you know, stock broker or something cool where you wore a suit and you know, that kind of life. But when I got into, when I, when ARS bought us, I got into. I was very fortunate that I was able to get involved with these guys who knew a lot more than I did about business and a bigger scale business. By that time I knew how to build a H VAC business system and a nice high performing business. But I really didn't understand how to do multi branch very well and, and M and A very well and you know, real M a not just buying broken stuff, right? And so I worked there for a few years and I got a really good education there. And so I said, you know what, I'd really enjoy this, I enjoy now because I'd be traveling around doing acquisitions and I'd see guys who did a lot better than I did. And I'm like, oh, I could have done that. Oh I could have done that. I should have done that. And so it reinspired me. So I decided back in 2000 to do it again. So I decided at that point I'm in the business building business. I'm not in the H VAC plumbing business. I build businesses and I sell them because I kind of like this whole deal where you, you know, you sprint for three, four, five years and then you sell it for 10, 15 years of profits. A nice little chunk of money, right? And I like just, I just like the idea of kind of being my own private equity shop. So that's what I did. And so I did the, the first one, did the second one in Vegas and Phoenix called yes, Air conditioning, plumbing and you know, various ones along the, along the way. And at one point, one point after I sold YES to Ars, I was a regional VP or division VP they called it. And they gave my team and I have seven businesses to fix for them and a big reward for that. So you know, we put the team together and we just executed, just execute my plan on building a business system, get it implemented, get the right team in place, get them focused and start driving results. So then I became the president of ARS for a while. So I was the president of this national company. You know, I'm a guy kid, started in an AC van fixing air conditioners. Now I'm the president of this, you know, $600 million business, national business and you know, learned A lot more. You know, every time I had these opportunities to get with these bigger guys, I really picked up some new knowledge that, you know, most of us from the industry like yourself, who you no different than me. You, you know, you're came from a family business. You're just not, you're just not going to be able to experience it. Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

My hope. You're describing what I hoped my post life, my post exit life would look like. Where, how, how do I, you know, yeah, the money's great, but like, how can you learn something interesting that like, when would be another chance you'd get to go work somewhere with 200 locations and you know, how else do you get that? So, yeah, that sounds like amazing. That sounds like what I hope my exit life looks like. You know, get paid to learn somewhere for five years and then go do it again. That sounds like fun.

[Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur]

Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's all I've been doing. And then, and so on this last deal with Ghetto, we, we really rung the bell in a big way. You know, we had a very, you know, industry leading exit.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur]

And then I said, well, what's next? But I had this team, this, this business, you know, this business development team that I've created over the years. Who knows, you know, we attack leadership management, money marketing, lead generation, lead conversion, client fulfillment. We attack client fulfillment, we attack every chunk of the business right there. We get the processes documented, get into training, start training our people, start recruiting the team, getting the financial understanding of the operation and keep going. So anyway, I sold the business in 21 and then I was stayed as a CEO for 22 and then it was a plan me plan retirement from H Vac. So they brought in their new CEO and then I went off and my team and I, we started attacking the standby generator industry. So I've been in that for.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

End.

[Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur]

Of year, will be two years. So it's two years now and we've had, we put together four locations. Dallas, Houston, Tampa and South Carolina. Yeah, we're off to the races. We acquired 14 million in revenue and we'll wrap up about 50 million with the same store growth this year.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Is there a Goliath store or are they roughly equal? 50 million generators is a lot. I know that's a lot of generators.

[Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur]

Yeah. Well, obviously our two big stores are, are Houston, you know, Houston's the number one standby market in the country. And then, and then Tampa is our second.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

But as you're, as you're thinking about this, so your ghetto was Your sixth industry leading exit as you're thinking of and, and your whole life was sort of this H Vac building and selling H Vac businesses. Maybe like a flare plumbing in there too but, but there was always like a buyer like because you knew the buying landscape. How do you think about that for standby generators? Because it doesn't seem like the buying, I just don't know. So I'm looking for education but it doesn't seem like the buying landscape is as straightforward as H Vac.

[Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur]

Well, look, PE is all over Main Street. Every, every business there is. You know, they're looking for opportunities and, and yes, they're there. I, I, I can't help but think that, you know, when I got in, when I got into generators last year, there was one PE shop that had a meaningful business. They had rolled up. We're starting to roll up and it's a nice, they have a really nice thing going. As soon as I got in and started talking about it and I don't know if this is because I was talking about it or because just the natural things have happened, but there's been a lot more PE involvement so there's a lot more competition for the businesses in the generator space. Today I would say probably there's five, six PE shops sniffing around it and then I get calls every single day from other PE shops that want to partner and see how they can get involved with it. But I want to get it, you know, we're going to get a little bit beefier.

[John Wilson]

Have you ever bought enterprise level software and realized that managing it really just became a full time job? Well, that's pretty much exactly why my restoration business switched over to fieldpulse. We were tired of software that promised efficiency, but came with endless training sessions, onboarding and frustrated techs and using it began to feel like it was a job all on its own. Fieldpulse was built for owner operators who don't want more dashboards. They need scheduling, invoicing and job tracking. And they need it all to live in one place without the chaos or the learning curve. FieldPulse is simple to roll out. It's easy for your team to actually use. And it was 75% cheaper than the other titans of software we were using. Right now, if you book a demo with FieldPulse, you'll get an exclusive partner offer. It's 20% off an eligible annual subscription and 15 50% off premium support for your first year. If your software upgrade has turned into a time suck, it might be time to make the move, book a demo with Field Pulse and see if it's a better fit. I'm, I'm trying to visualize in my life going from maybe not zero, like you've led teams like you were doing big stuff in, in a previous life, but going from like 0 to 3,500 employees in five years. I don't, I don't even know, like, what does that look like? As a personal development, a professional development? How do you brace yourself for impact?

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

It's. I'm, I'm trying to learn every day about how to be a better leader. There's so many things that I'm not good at and I, I know I need to work on. One of those things is I communicate pretty well with enough of our team, but at this level, most of the people don't ever see me. Most of our teammates don't see me enough.

[John Wilson]

I mean, you probably work with like six people.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Yeah. I mean. Yes. And people at our corporate office. I see. I try to pop into our companies every now and then. So, you know, that stuff helps. But there's certainly a lot of areas to improve when you're highly distributed like this. We have over 30 offices all over. And one of the areas I'm excited to improve on is to bring more communication deeper into the organization.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

And show them I'm excited for what they're doing and that I, I don't speak to them enough, but I care about what they're doing.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

And so there, there is areas for improvement. I'm willing to admit. We got, We've grown so fast. We don't have a good internal way to do that.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

LinkedIn is one of the ways. I, I try to be pretty active on there. We've got about a third of our workforce on LinkedIn or at least connected to us somehow through our companies or through me. And yeah. Just a lot to improve upon when you're that big. Because it's, it's never perfect.

[John Wilson]

It feels like, yeah, yeah, that'd be a lot. And that's a complicated problem. I mean, if we. Chad Peterman from Peterman Brothers started a podcast in. It was an internal podcast. He, he later ended up publishing live. But the. That was his original goal. I think there are 10 or 12 locations now and it was the same thing. They're distributed. I see these guys once a month. How do we still spread culture? How do we talk about what I'm doing? How do we talk about, like, Jimmy's amazing five star review? How do we still do the small but really important stuff.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Spot on.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

I. I love the podcast idea. We're exploring a few other mediums. What's also pretty cool is some of our companies have already got mechanisms where they. They do it within their company already.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

And so most of the companies have some sort of connection already, at least to their.

[John Wilson]

Which is probably what matters the most.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

I would imagine. Like the people you see every day, eye to eye.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

I. I would agree. I want our teams in the field to know they're part of a local organization that cares about them. I care about them deeply, but I don't get a chance to see them all the time.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

So the leadership in whatever local organization or opco, it really matters to me that that person takes this seriously as well.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

And I get to see them more. Like we're all going to be together next week. 50 or 60 people from around the company are flying in that all run P&LS and our local leadership. And we're building that culture.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Twice a year. See each other at least four times a year for various things. But this meeting is a real culture. We focus on culture there so they can go back and at least impart some of the care that we have for them through them as the leader that's locally there.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. Can you walk me through a little bit of the org structure? So there's 30 locations. Each one has a branch president or branch GM or something. What's the smallest location? What's the biggest?

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

It's a range. We're, we're. We've combined kind of some of the smaller ones. So really, when you look at the small ones, they're like 15 million, roughly.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Our biggest ones in the high 200s.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

So there's range.

[John Wilson]

Yes.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

But what we've done is we've created divisions. So we have five divisions. We have a west division, a northeast division, a southeast division, an industrial division, and a service organization. The service organization's national. Industrials. National. Those other three are regions of the US and so we have leadership in those divisions as well as key. Key members for those divisions as well. HR leader, recruiting, finance, safety, service for each division.

[John Wilson]

Okay. And these are like regionalized depart. Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

For the three that are regionalized, they're. They're, they're regionalized. The other two that are national have kind of a customer focus, an industrial customer focus. There's a HR leader for that. There's a finance leader for that. There's a couple operations leaders. There's a leader and a, you know, VP and so we, we've developed a, a part, we've sized part of our business. So they're all roughly the same size.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

And they all can like, they each.

[John Wilson]

Have roughly the same headcount. Like total reporting. Is that what you meant?

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Roughly? Roughly, yeah. Revenue and profitability and everything like that. So the leaders that run those divisions are running a sizable business with the local leaders.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

That are boots on the ground.

[John Wilson]

Yes. Okay.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

And we, we think that's, that, that's relatively new for us. Not that long ago it was me and my partner.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. I mean I'm like listening to what you're saying and I'm like the org. The amount of changes you must have made in like a five year period to nail down org structure and still a moving target because you're still acquiring companies. But yeah, that'd be a lot. I mean I just think about what we've done in a one location, you know, not that big business and we've gone through a lot like you know, I'm trying to envision that over 30 locations.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

It's, it's super interesting because when we started I was the president, CEO of one opco.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. And that, that, the one, the first one in Arizona. Okay.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

That, that was my job was to survive.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Collecting payments from customers, getting big fires, hiring, firing. And, and that business when we bought it, didn't even have a website.

[John Wilson]

Okay.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

So we, we've learned, we've, we've had to evolve constantly.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

I mean I, I came from Walmart, I was an executive at Walmart before I came over to this job. And it was, it was a culture shock because I got used to the big company benefits. Post a job, you get ten hundred, two hundred people applying for that job.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Come to this little opco with no website, no social media presence. Nobody hardly knows who they are, but they still do 17 million per year of revenue. And I would post a job for a project manager and no one would apply. Literally no one would apply. I remember, I remember getting a guy to, to I talked him on the phone and he was going to come in, I was going to interview him, he was going to come in. And I remember sitting in the lobby for an hour after the time that he said he was going to be there thinking oh he's going to show up. Yeah, he's going to show up. Never showed up. Literally multiple times this happened to me. So there was a lot of learnings. When you talk about Org, I mean that, that was like my challenge not that long ago.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

To now what we're, what we're dealing with. It's just a totally different environment.

[John Wilson]

Do you think this is easier for me?

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Yeah, way easier.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

A million times easier.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah, I would, I would imagine so. So we're getting ready to go multi location and likely multi state will be our first like new location. So like as I'm thinking about, I'm. I'm thinking about the next six months of my life and I'm, you know, I'm thinking about the last five years of yours and how I think about org structure. Like what should I be doing every day? I'm not as in the weeds as you were. But like not long ago, like three.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Years ago, you probably were. Yeah, totally. At some point.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. In 2022, I was helping pick up the phone because we accidentally turned over our whole call center. Like, you know.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Yeah, you do what you have to do.

[John Wilson]

You do what you got to do. But yeah, I'm thinking about that and I'm thinking about all of the decisions that you've probably gone through. Like what should be centralized, what should be decentralized. And what I seem to have landed on in theory, but obviously I haven't executed on anything is like, well, centralize almost nothing. Like, because if I. The more I centralize, the harder my life is going to be because then I have to frankly do more versus like people want to know. They want to be eye to eye with their, the people in their branch. They're like that's who matters to them. Like I don't matter to them in Cleveland if somebody else is in Pittsburgh. Like nobody gives a. About John. Right. And they should, they shouldn't give a shit about me. Like I'm not in their life very much.

[Experienced HVAC Business Owner / Serial Entrepreneur]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Right. Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

It's. It's a difficult thing to say what, what it should be for you guys or, or even for us because it's a moving target a little bit. But I do highly believe in empowered, decentralized teams.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

To a degree. They should have autonomy to make certain decisions. They should have autonomy to, you know, drive the P and L. Yeah. And are there things that that person wants to do and are there things that that person doesn't want to do? And I think the decisions of what corporate does is, is going to be unique for each individual in each company. But I think generally speaking, the person that's going to drive the best P and L for you doesn't want to manage insurance.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

And doesn't want to manage for us, bonding and.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Operations Executive / President of Multi-location Company]

Employee renewal. You know, insurance renewals and a lot of the back office stuff. So. Yeah, so there is parts of this that, that I think you can get to where a new branch probably. We want them to be empowered, but we don't want them to be bogged down. Completely bogged down with the overhead stuff that doesn't drive any revenue or profit.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. For too long I was letting the wrong marketing agencies set my money on fire. And their marketing looked pretty good. On paper the reporting was attractive, but at the end of the day it just wasn't driving leads. That's why I started using service scalers at Wilson. Service Killers is a marketing agency built specifically for home service companies. They focus on the channels that actually drive leads like targeted ppc, local service ads, SEO, Google business profile. So that you're showing up in front of your customers that are actively searching. They'll help you see exactly what's working so you stop wasting ad dollars on low quality leads. Right now they're doing something crazy and they're giving the opportunity for one entrepreneur to get up to 12 months of marketing on them. So that's up to $100,000 in services for the right operator. If you are serious about tightening up your marketing in 2026 and want to see what this could look like for your business, go to service scalers.com and book a free strategy call and let them know that I sent you.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

And I think you, you are correct. I think you have to change your mindset when you think about hiring technicians in a smaller area because it's the long game. It's always going to be the long game. And I would much rather pick up somebody who's got soft skills and train them, take the time to train them on the service system and all the ways that we do different, you know, do business differently. Then try and take a seasoned person who has, you know, junk for skills talking with the customer that I can't. I mean, I can try, but we've learned over and over again it doesn't work. You have to, you have to have those skills. So I think for us we just kind of figured out along the way that invest, you have to invest in the people. And does that take a lot more time than, than you're talking about? Yeah, it takes a heck of a lot more time. But I think that we find they're more apt to stay longer because we've invested so much into them and built that relationship. So, you know, we're not only building relationships with customers, but we're building relation, long standing relationships with, with our employees as well. And I think it's just a different mindset to how, how you're going to hire.

[Trades Industry Manager / Trainer]

Like we're getting a lot of the people from factories or from trade schools coming in and applying from different industries and we're just very open to that. And just like she said, they thrive in that freedom to be kind of creative. And when we just train in house and on the technical side and the customers just love that.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. How many people are you training and how long does it take? Two years. One year.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

It can take two, two years to fully train, sometimes four. And it really depends on the individual. We've been using Next Tech to, through nexstar to train a lot of, of the green, super green people who come in. But you know, it really depends on the individual. Like I had an electrician who went through the entire NexTech program in two months, which is mind blowing. That's a lot of content and a lot of videos and a lot of check off to make sure they know what they're doing. So it really just depends on the individual on, on their capacity to learn at a faster pace. But somebody who already has the, the knowledge and you're really just working on refining their, their service system. And how, how long would you say for that?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Six months.

[Trades Industry Manager / Trainer]

Yeah, it's, you know, it's really tough because you're trying to plug in a person into a, into a department and you want them to get, be productive and, and be able to bring revenue in in the shortest amount of time.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Right.

[Trades Industry Manager / Trainer]

And, and that's, that's not, it's not always ideal. Yeah, it's not ideal. I mean you got to think, think out six months. So we've went to a little bit different model on our staffing and, and I don't know that we have anybody, maybe a couple of H VAC technicians, but most everybody has a trainee that's in their truck right now. So we're just trying to get ahead of that curve on the staffing.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

It's something that I think once you get it in your head that you have to constantly be hiring and constantly be training all the time. Like all the time. It's just something that you have to do to maintain that steady stream of individuals coming in for, to, to build them all up to be that, that revenue producing tech. It's just a constant have to.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

And especially now, I mean there's less and less coming in to the trades and I, you know, I, I have high hopes for, for the newer generations of of realizing, you know, you can make a really good living not going to a four year college and you can just come right on into the trades and I'll welcome you with open arms. Like, come on in.

[John Wilson]

You've got the data on this. Because if you work with. It's explore the trades.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

But like my. I'll give a vibe. So this is, you know, zero, zero facts, all vibes over here.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

Okay.

[John Wilson]

It, my vibe is that there are more and more young people joining the trades.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

Yes.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Every day.

[John Wilson]

I mean, TikTok, I think this was just on either Wall Street Journal or New York Times. But like TikTok is driving like a trades revolution for exactly what you just said.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Hey, you want to make 100 grand at 25 and you can buy a house and you don't need college debt? Like, that's a hell of a pitch.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

It is. And I feel like it's finally getting heard because, you know, there's not, there's not. Yeah, there's TikTok, but it's, it's finally getting. I feel like it went backwards. It's like it's, it's gotten from industry and finally into the schools. And the schools are finally getting the point that, oh, oh, I don't have to tell them all they have to go to college, you know, because I mean, I could, I could almost quote Mike Rowe. You know, for how many years have we been shoving it down everybody's throat that you have to go to a four year college and you don't.

[John Wilson]

You know, a funny anecdote about my life, okay, is I was not a very good student. So I became a plumber. Right. But I was not a very good student. And in junior of high school had a teacher that told me, hey, if you don't get your crates up, you're going to end up being a plumber. And she was right. And she was right. But like, you know, here we are today, 160 employees later.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

Don't you want to just walk into their office and be like, no, really?

[John Wilson]

Like, no, I won. But I do, I do think it's, I do think it's funny because it's sort of like, yeah, yeah, it's the exact. I'm really glad that happened.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

I, I have a similar actual experience like that my guidance counselor told me not to bother going to college because I'd never make it. And it's exact opposite. I got my degree and, and here I sit. But they never would have. You know, I, I just think the point is stop trying to Push them in areas that they don't want to go. Yeah, you know, if they don't like school, they don't like, you know, doing what they're doing. If they want to explore other options, give them other options. I mean, I'm not a, I'm not opposed to four year colleges. Obviously we need that for other trades. You know, if you want a doctor, you're hoping they're, they're going to be licensed. So it's, it has its place. But don't forget there's other areas, other conversations to be had about opportunities. You know, don't just shut the door, don't even tell them the door exists. I mean if you want to go down that rabbit hole, you can go down women in the trades. And how that was unheard of. My grandfather actually ran the same type of business that we have was never, ever brought up, ever. It never even occurred to him. He had two daughters and it never even occurred to him to ever pass down his information. It all died with him. That's wild and it's sad. You know, all that knowledge that just went to the wayside and quit assuming you know what's best for the kids that you have influence over and start asking more questions instead of, you know, this is what you need to do. Well, what do you want to do? What are you good at? You know, I think that's another conversation. What are you good at and where do you want to be? Because if you just tell them what they have to do, you know, they're going to go do that and then four years later they're going to have 200, whatever, $500,000 in debt and they're still going to be lost.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, I think we'll have a boom here shortly. I think it's already started. But I don't know how much of your business so far has been impacted by AI, but I mean it's, it's a thing. So I think the more that we see AI like take over more of the jobs that were entry level or even like knowledge worker jobs.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

The next.

[John Wilson]

Best earning is the trades. So I, I think it'll be interesting to see like Gen Z is already there with tick tock and like hey, no college debt. Hey, a lot of money, there's a lot of good here. What happens when the 30 and 40 year olds start getting displaced from jobs that were historically like safe, but between offshoring and AI, like they don't exist anymore. Like do accounting jobs exist anymore? I think that like that's a real question that I think most of the industry is trying to figure out. So, yeah, I, I think we're, the next five years are going to be fascinating because we have Gen Z really coming into their own and a large portion of the country being displaced and they got it. They got to put food.

[Trades Industry Manager / Trainer]

I think that's a great opportunity. You're talking about the 30 and 40 year olds because the, you know, the young generation, the 20, you know, the 20 year olds that are coming in, I mean they have their own challenges of, of maturity and, and life skills that they don't have yet. Yeah, we, that we all have to deal with. So I think about somebody that's in their 30s and 40s and have a lot of life skills, a great transition into the trades.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

Yeah, it would.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, no, I think so too. Yeah, I think so too.

[Trades Workforce Development Expert / Trainer]

Yeah, I don't, and I don't really have stats to back this up, but it sure feels like plumbing is going to be really big the business. Yeah, plumbing is, plumbing is, plumbing's great. Yeah, plumbing's awesome.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Plumbing is great.

[John Wilson]

It just feels like, well, it's less aiable. I mean, that's a part of this too. Like there is already with the Google glasses, like AI can diagnose furnace problems. So that is a part of the. Is there a displacement there or Likely less of a displacement and more, hey, we can onboard an H vac tech in 30 days because AI does all of the work instead of years of experience now, whereas plumbing that feels harder is probably not going to drill a drainage.