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

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 hire should look like, why most owners mis...

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 single trade business and start building a ...

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 problem.

This conversation goes deep on ...

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 Jack 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, and building a business that can win e...

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 invest, when to cut, and how to avoid...

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, cash flow, and what it actually takes t...

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 homeowners, schools, hospitals, and c...

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 levers that close the gap: awareness, attri...

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 fast.

They also zoom out into the ope...

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 between EBITDA and real take-home prof...

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, earlier financing, and structured opt...

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 down the massive gap between our plumbi...

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 Google Ads and more like a digital ref...

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 sells for a multiple, then any new ...

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’t put them on every corner” lesson).

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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 “map pack visibility” rem...

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, getting crushed by payroll tax mistake...

In this episode, John Wilson sits down with Patrick Dichter, owner of AppleTree Business Services, to break down what “good accounting” actually looks like inside a growing home service business — and why financial clarity becomes a competitive advantage as you scale.

John opens up about a hard truth: he didn’t get his first clean month-end close until last year, and it made almost a decade of decision-making harder than it needed t...

In this episode, John Wilson is on-site in Chicago with Aizik Zimerman, owner of J.Blanton Plumbing, to break down how one of the fastest-growing plumbing companies in the country built a sewer and drain growth engine. Since buying the $6M Jay Blanton business at the end of 2022, Aizik has scaled it to ~$25M this year and a $30M run rate — and nearly half that growth is coming from sewers. They unpack the investments, the operation...