The best thing an established business can do isn’t donate. It’s partner. Evan launched Simply Salt straight out of high school. Instead of treating him like a kid with a side hustle, we made him part of how we serve our customers. Young entrepreneurs don’t need applause, they need real contracts. If you’ve got a business, you’ve got doors you can open.
Entrepreneurship is such a blessing. I've been blessed to be in a family-owned business for many years at this point in time. And any time that we...
Most owners add a second location before they’re ready. Here’s the checklist I’d run first. One: market share. We’re under 10% in Indianapolis after 40 years, so “we’ve maxed out here” is usually wrong. Two: infrastructure. Who runs it, who they report to, centralized or not. Three: distance. Within an hour you can share install labor. Three hours, you can’t. Get honest on all three or the culture at location two pays the price.
You're thinking about adding a second location. Let me give you a few things to think about. First, is are you dominating your current market? Wha...
Recruiting doesn’t stop the day someone starts. It’s only just begun. That’s why every new employee here goes through a structured two-week onboarding program, and why I tell every class the same thing: my hope is this is your last first day ever. You fought to get that person in the door. If your onboarding is winging it, you’re un-recruiting them in week one.
Recruiting doesn't stop the day an employee starts. It's only just begun. We here at Peterman Brothers put a ton of emphasis in the onboarding pro...
You already spent the money to acquire your customers. Why only sell them one thing? Adding a trade takes real planning, but it’s nothing compared to opening a second location. Same customer base, same trust, same phone number they already have saved. The hardest, most expensive part of growth is already done. Use it.
another trade does take a lot of thinking, a lot of planning to execute it. It is not easy by any means, but definitely easier than adding a secon...
Ask yourself what a private equity firm would notice about your business that you don’t. That’s not a hypothetical. It’s exactly why they’ve flooded into home services: fragmented markets, recurring revenue through memberships, and demand that never dries up because homes always break. See what they see, and you build a better company either way, sell it or keep it.
Private equity hasn't entered the home services space because it's trendy. They've entered because most owners are leaving money on the table. Let...
If you’re picking a trade to build a business in, this ranking might change your mind. I scored six trades 1 to 10 based on two things: ticket size and seasonality. The ones with year-round demand and big invoices won. The ones tied to a short season lost points no matter how good the work is.
rate these home service industries as a business from one to 10. So let's start with plumbing. - Plumbing, I would give a seven to. You've got lar...
Some of our best moves as a company trace back to one thing: a conversation, not a strategy session. Whiteboards are great for organizing what you already know. They're useless for the problems you haven't solved yet. For that, you need someone who's already been where you're stuck. That's what I'm chasing every time I sit down with people further down the road than me.
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Of the three trades I’ve built, plumbing is the one I’d start over in today. My dad built an HVAC company, so this isn’t the obvious answer. But demand for plumbing never stops, and water treatment (especially with hard water like ours) is a wide-open opportunity most homeowners never even realize is fixable. There are entire companies built on water treatment alone. Fold it into plumbing and you’ve got a genuinely great business.
I've built an HVAC plumbing and electrical. Here's the one I would start over again today. That's plumbing. I know that sounds weird. My dad was a...
Even after doing it successfully, I’d tell you a second location is one of the hardest things you can do. Adding a trade keeps your existing trust intact. A new location throws it out. New market, no reputation, marketing costs that are suddenly much higher, and a location an hour or two away that you can’t manage the way you manage the one under your roof. Go in with your eyes open.
Adding a second location is probably one of the hardest things to do. Have we done it here successfully? 100%. If I look back, would I have done t...
There’s a specific moment I knew we had to tear down a $100M company and start over. Walking the building, asking what everyone was doing, and realizing the answer wasn’t clear anymore. We’d built for a growth curve that stopped being real after COVID. The people weren’t the problem. The process was, and we’d been covering the cracks with headcount instead of fixing them.
We had to tear down a $100 million revenue company and here's the exact moment I knew that's what we needed to do. I was walking around. There wer...
Everyone’s excited about hiring outside the industry. I am too, now. Not when we were small. The trend skips a step: you need insulation first. Field supervisors and people who know the trade have to be in place so an outsider can focus purely on strategy and training instead of getting exposed on things they don’t know. Get the order right, and outside hires become a real advantage instead of a risk.
Most of my team now came from outside the industry. That's kind of like an invogue thing I feel like it has been for some years is like, hey, you'...
The most underrated seat in our company doesn’t sell anything. It decides who does. Our dispatch team sends the right technician to the right call across 12 locations, and that single decision often determines whether the job closes. Skill match, tone match, sometimes geography. Get it right and your best techs are set up to win. Get it wrong and you’ve sabotaged the sale before it started.
Our dispatch team moves more money in a day than most of our salespeople. Let me explain. Our dispatch team is entrusted with making sure that we ...