Why trades companies stop growing at $3M, $5M, or $10M.

The Argument

Six claims. Tap any one to read the supporting detail. Skip the ones that don't land.

• 01

  The advice you've been hearing isn't wrong. It's just incomplete.

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  The trades coaching world has good people in it. BDR, CertainPath, Service MVP, Breakthrough Academy, EGIA. Their members make more money.

  Their work gets companies from $500K to $2M. Sometimes $3M. The good ones to $5M and beyond.

  But the companies that scale past $3M without breaking the owner usually figure out one more thing on top of all that. Something that doesn't fit on a marketing dashboard or a pricing spreadsheet.

• 02

  Here's what hitting the ceiling actually looks like.

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  The Six Signs

  • 01You're back in the truck at least one day a week, and not by choice.
  • 02Every decision over $500 still comes to you, even decisions you've explained twice before.
  • 03Your service manager is good at fixing equipment and uncomfortable holding people accountable.
  • 04You haven't taken a real vacation in three years. The one you tried got interrupted by phone calls.
  • 05You've promoted somebody and watched them fail. You promoted somebody else and watched them leave.
  • 06You think about selling. Then you remember the company depends on you, and a buyer would notice.

  If three or more landed, you don't have a hiring problem. You don't have a pricing problem. You're at the ceiling.

• 03

  Hiring a GM from outside almost never works.

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  When an owner hits this ceiling, the first instinct is to hire a general manager from outside.

  Pay them what feels like a fortune. Hand them the keys. Get your life back.

  Sometimes it works. Most of the time it doesn't, and here's the honest reason. The person you hired doesn't know your customers, your equipment, your suppliers, or your team. They have to be taught all of that anyway. They don't have authority with the crew because the crew doesn't know them. And six months in, the crew is going around the new hire to you.

  So you absorb the work again. The new GM either quits, or stays in a role smaller than the title. The ceiling stays where it was.

• 04

  The leader you need is almost always already on your payroll.

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  The technician who's been with you nine years. The dispatcher who runs the office like clockwork. The installer's apprentice who keeps quietly making the right calls. They don't look like leaders yet. They've never been taught.

  But they understand your business in a way no outside hire ever will. They know the customers. They know the equipment. They know the team. The crew already trusts them.

  They just need someone to actually develop them into the role they could grow into.

• 05

  "Growing your own" is a multi-year practice, not a one-day seminar.

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  I started Tom's Mechanical with a handful of employees and a debt to pay down.

  Over the next four decades I made every mistake an owner can make. I promoted the wrong people. I held on to the right people too long without giving them more. I taught by accident instead of by design. I assumed people understood things I'd never actually said out loud.

  Somewhere around year ten I started writing memos to my team. Bi-weekly. On letterhead. About the things I was learning, the things I'd done wrong, the things I'd seen work. I wrote them because I couldn't be in front of every person every day, and the only way to be consistent was to put it in writing.

  I did that for almost thirty years. The stack got tall. Eventually it became the book.

  But the real product wasn't the book. The real product was the system underneath: a consistent practice of giving people increasingly meaningful responsibility, with coaching alongside it, year after year, until they grew into the role.

• 06

  What this is, and what it isn't.

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  What I offer isn't a membership. It isn't a monthly fee. It isn't a software platform or a curriculum library or a private community with a Slack channel.

  It's me. On a plane. To your shop. For two full days.

  Then six months of monthly Zoom coaching calls, where the people I trained bring me real situations from the last 30 days and we work through them.

  That's the program. There isn't a tier above it. There isn't a tier below it. If you wanted a coach with a downloadable workbook and a Calendly link, I'm not your guy.

  If you want a trade owner who's actually done this for 38 years to come into your shop and teach the system to your team — that's what I do.