I didn’t have a backup plan, so I built a business instead.
In 2017, I had a felony on my record and a family masonry business that was about to fold. My dad was ready to hang up his tools and go back to the union. I told him: let me try running this. If I fail, we’re no worse off than we already are.
That was Force Masonry Construction. Me, my dad, and three part-time guys. Year one, we did about $500K and barely survived the cost of doing business. Eight years later, between Force Masonry and Force Basements, we were doing $7M a year with over 30 employees, and I sold both companies at a 9x multiple.
I didn’t read about that outcome in a book. I built it, mistake by mistake. And the single biggest accelerator in that whole run wasn’t a new tool, a new truck, or a new lead source. It was having someone in my corner who could see what I couldn’t.
The Real Skill: Knowing What You Don’t Know
Nobody starting a home service business thinks they’re missing something obvious. You know the trade. You can lay block, run wire, fix a furnace, install a basement system, better than almost anyone. That was never the gap.
The gap is everything around the work: pricing, hiring, systems, cash flow, leadership. And here’s the part that trips up almost every owner: you don’t know what you don’t know, which means you don’t even know to go looking for it.
A mentor’s real value isn’t handing you answers. It’s pointing at the blind spot you’ve been driving past for years and saying, “That. Right there. That’s costing you.”
A Mentor Gives You Direction, But That’s Only Half the Job
Running a business, like running a life, doesn’t move on hope. It moves on decisions, discipline, and direction. Someone who’s already built and sold a company in your world can show you the fastest path between where you are and where you’re trying to go, and help you skip the years I spent figuring it out the hard way.
But direction is only half of what a mentor is worth.
The Other Half: Accountability
You can know exactly what needs to happen, raise your prices, cut the guy who’s bleeding you dry, finally build a real hiring process, and still not do it. Knowing and doing are two different things. Life happens. A truck breaks down, a customer complains, and the “important but not urgent” fix gets pushed another month. Then another.
Think of it like a coach at the gym. You already know squats build legs and cardio helps your heart. That knowledge alone doesn’t get you there at 5 a.m. on a Tuesday. A coach standing there waiting for you does. Someone who notices when you skip leg day and asks why.
A business mentor does the same thing for your company. He’s the one asking, “Did you actually make those hiring calls this week? Did you raise your rates on the new estimates? Why hasn’t that number moved in three months?”
That kind of accountability isn’t always comfortable. It’s also exactly what separates the owners who stay stuck from the ones who break through.
Why This Matters So Much in the Home Service Industry
I didn’t build wealth or scale a company from behind a desk. I built it from inside two home service businesses, masonry and basement systems, with trucks, crews, seasonality, and every headache that comes with running a trade-based business. That’s a different animal than a generic business coach who’s never had to deal with a no-show subcontractor or a slow winter.
A mentor who’s actually run a home service company understands the specific traps: underpricing because you don’t know your real margins, hiring the wrong guy in a different shirt three times in a row, hitting a revenue plateau because you’re still doing everything yourself. That kind of specific, lived experience, paired with real accountability, is what actually moves the needle.
If You Feel Stuck, This Is Usually Why
Whether you’re just getting a crew off the ground or you’ve been running a home service business for years and hit a wall, it’s rarely a work-ethic problem. Usually it’s one of these:
- You don’t know what you don’t know, so you keep solving the wrong problem
- You know what to do, but nothing’s holding you accountable to actually do it
- You’re too close to your own business to see it clearly
A mentor solves all three, not by doing the work for you, but by pointing out the blind spot and then standing there, gym-partner style, making sure you show up and do the reps.
The Bottom Line
I lost my dad in 2022, the man who took that first leap with me. I kept building anyway, because that’s what running a business, and running a life, requires. You don’t get anywhere staring in the rearview mirror. You look through the windshield and keep moving.
Having the right person in your corner didn’t just change my business. It changed how I think. If you’re grinding away at your home service business and doing everything right but still spinning your wheels, it might not be a knowledge problem. It might be that you don’t have someone who can see your blind spots and hold you to fixing them.
That’s the kind of partner I aim to be for home service business owners now, whether you’re starting with nothing but guts and a part-time crew, or you’re sitting at a few million in revenue trying to figure out how to break through to the next level.