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PODCAST

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

The Owned and Operated electrical, HVAC, and plumbing business growth podcast is hosted by John Wilson and Jack Carr. These two Home Service Business owners bring you weekly podcasts and daily content with multiple perspectives, actionable advice, and info on an ever-changing industry revolving around advertising, lead generation, and more.Join us every Tuesday for topical conversations that unlock the potential for your business growth. Covering topics from top-tier talent recruitment to mastering

business entrepreneurship

All Episodes

27:58

Why We Stopped Buying Service Vans — And You Should Too

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/02/12

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 installs. They unpack why the Maverick may be the most capital-efficient vehicle for HVAC, plumbing, a...

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33:04

Google PPC Isn’t Dead — You’re Just Running It Wrong

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/02/10

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 isn’t the platform—it’s execution. They walk through why PPC fails for most owners, how it’s fund...

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36:03

How to Scale to $100M Without Breaking Your Business

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/02/05

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 reinvest instead of upgrading their lifestyle too early, and why “the war is won inside the home” no ma...

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39:15

Under $5M? Marketing Isn’t Complicated (Here’s the...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/02/03

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 misunderstand the budget math, and John’s spicy take: If you’r...

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35:57

Building, Scaling, and Selling Home Service...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/01/29

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 platform. These clips span decades of operator experience, fr...

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48:01

How to Budget Marketing in 2026 (Without Wasting Cash)

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/01/27

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 gross profit–based budgeting, flexible marketing spend, and t...

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41:33

What Home Service Business Should You Start in 2026?...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/01/22

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 even when weather, competition, and ad platforms don’t coopera...

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46:39

Feed Drop: Entry & Exit — How Operators Plan for Real...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/01/21

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 “hope-based” growth. They unpack why so many firms stal...

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25:58

The Dark Side of Roofing: Insurance Scams, Storm...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/01/20

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 to start a roofing business (especially in Florida). In this e...

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31:41

The Disaster Roofing Business: Temporary Roofs, Real...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/01/15

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 commercial properties time while insurance claims and full roof...

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48:58

How to Turn Referrals Into a Scalable, Predictable...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/01/13

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, attribution, and automated rewards. You’ll learn how top HVAC, pl...

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34:43

Google LSAs: The Easiest Way to Add Leads Tomorrow

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/01/08

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 operator view: how John evaluates acquisitions through the lens...

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45:01

Stop Losing Money in 2026: The Profit Plan for Higher...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/01/06

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 profit. They walk through the exact planning process they used this y...

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30:53

The Sales Process That Took Us From Losing Money to...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2026/01/01

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 options does. We unpack how repair-first thinking killed profita...

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49:27

The REAL Cost of Running a Trades Business in 2025 —...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2025/12/30

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 plumbing wins and HVAC headwinds, why "Always Be Recruiting" became...

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25:55

Nextdoor Marketing for Contractors: The Local...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2025/12/23

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 referral engine. John and Sam discuss why salesy ads and coupons...

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38:43

How Smart Home Service Owners Should Invest (P&L,...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2025/12/18

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 expense should produce a return that justifies that multiple—...

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31:33

Remote Staffing for Contractors: How to Hire Offshore...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2025/12/16

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). Then they go deep on what actually drives scale: building a ...

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38:06

AI Didn’t Kill Google Search — Here’s Why GBP Still Wins

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2025/12/11

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” remains the cheapest, highest-intent lead source in the game. They g...

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71:36

He Lost Everything at 25: Then Built a $250M Home...

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC... ·

2025/12/09

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 mistakes, and discovering The E-Myth at the exact moment everything ...

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319 results

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