Ben Alexander shares his journey from running a $35 million HVAC division to starting and growing Hank's Handyman Services. He discusses the challenges of pricing, scheduling, and scaling a handyman business, emphasizing the importance of understanding material costs and profit margins.

Takeaways

• Pricing complexity in the handyman industry
• Scheduling challenges and strategies for managing job requests
• The impact of material costs and profit margins on business growth Tier levels for technicians
• Creating a career path
• Challenges of hiring and training in the handyman industry
• Importance of systematized training
• Difficulty of sourcing skilled labor in the handyman space Systematizing the business is crucial for growth and scalability.
• Avoid shiny object syndrome and focus on core business operations before expanding into new areas of service.
• The sweet spot for growth is around 10-15 trucks, and a revenue range of 3-5 million is manageable and sustainable.

👉Connect with Ben: thetradeworx.com

👉 Schedule a free, no-pressure strategy call: https://go.handymanmarketingpros.com
👉 Grab the free 3-in-1 Handyman Playbook Bundle: https://go.handymanmarketingpros.com/playbooks
👉 Join the Home Hero Business Owner Community: facebook.com/groups/homeherocommunity
👉Test the AI Receptionist: https://handymanmarketingpros.com/services/ai-receptionist/

New episodes of the Home Hero Podcast every week. If you got value from this one, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more home service pros find the show.

The conversation delves into the significance of answering the phone for business owners, addressing the pain of unanswered calls, dealing with spam calls, the value of answering the phone, training and benefits of AI receptionist, mental space and anxiety relief, flexibility and customization of phone answering, and encouragement to answer the phone.

Takeaways

• Importance of answering the phone for business success
• The mental space and anxiety relief provided by AI receptionist services

Hosted by Jason Call and Coby McManaman of Handyman Marketing Pros

👉 Schedule a free, no-pressure strategy call: https://go.handymanmarketingpros.com
👉 Grab the free 3-in-1 Handyman Playbook Bundle: https://go.handymanmarketingpros.com/playbooks
👉 Join the Home Hero Business Owner Community: facebook.com/groups/homeherocommunity
👉Test the AI Receptionist: https://handymanmarketingpros.com/services/ai-receptionist/

New episodes of the Home Hero Podcast every week. If you got value from this one, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more home service pros find the show.

In this episode, Jason Call and Coby McManaman break down what to do before the slow season hits and what to do once it does. Coby ran his own remodeling crew in Michigan before coming over to the marketing side, so a lot of this is what he actually did to keep work on the books from Thanksgiving through the new year.

What we get into:

→ Why late August and early September is the window, not November
→ Christmas light setup and teardown, and when adding a service is a red flag instead of a smart play
→ Working your ghosted estimates from the last six to twelve months
→ Email and text campaigns to your database, framed around the holidays instead of around you needing work
→ Personal outreach to your best clients without sounding like you are begging for work
→ Realtor and property manager punch lists on vacant houses before the first of the year
→ Booking your big projects backwards so you can pull clients forward instead of pushing them out
→ Using the slow time to fix your estimate process, your customer experience, and your job costing

Hosted by Jason Call and Coby McManaman of Handyman Marketing Pros

👉 Schedule a free, no-pressure strategy call: https://go.handymanmarketingpros.com
👉 Grab the free 3-in-1 Handyman Playbook Bundle: https://go.handymanmarketingpros.com/playbooks
👉 Join the Home Hero Business Owner Community: facebook.com/groups/homeherocommunity

New episodes of the Home Hero Podcast every week. If you got value from this one, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more home service pros find the show.

The conversation addresses the issue of spam calls from individuals claiming to work with Google or Apple Maps. It advises against engaging with these calls and highlights the deceptive nature of the services being offered. The discussion also explores the affiliation of these callers with Google and emphasizes the importance of ignoring such calls.

Takeaways

• Ignore cold calls offering Google or Apple Maps services
• Affiliation with Google is often a sales tactic and not a genuine association

Hosted by Jason Call and Coby McManaman of Handyman Marketing Pros

👉 Schedule a free, no-pressure strategy call: https://go.handymanmarketingpros.com
👉 Grab the free 3-in-1 Handyman Playbook Bundle: https://go.handymanmarketingpros.com/playbooks
👉 Join the Home Hero Business Owner Community: facebook.com/groups/homeherocommunity

New episodes of the Home Hero Podcast every week. If you got value from this one, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more home service pros find the show.

Michael Oakes started out coaching basketball and teaching health education in New Jersey. Then he moved west, took a job at a startup called Federal Express when there were six or eight people in the entire Western Division, and spent the next few decades learning business the hard way.

He co-founded a same-day delivery company before most people knew what same-day meant, turned it into a national franchise called 1-800 Courier, scaled it to $40 million in revenue, and discovered that the profit at the bottom was close to nothing.

That last part is the reason this episode is worth your drive time. Michael has been Jason's business coach for almost ten years, going back to the day Jason pulled a Sundance Coaching business card off the wall at an auto shop while spending most of his savings on an unexpected car repair. He had no revenue yet. He hired a coach anyway, which put his business net negative on day one, and he still calls it one of the best investments he has ever made.

In this episode:

• Why $40 million in top line meant almost nothing, and Michael's rule that business is a sport and net profit is how you keep score
• The three filters he puts in front of every decision (time, money, and is it right), plus Coby's confession about the hours he spent designing a logo instead of writing the estimates he owed clients
• Why "busy is a disease" and what Michael makes his clients say instead when he asks how their day is going
• The eight pillars every business owner has to keep an eye on, and why being great with your hands only covers one of them
• Hiring for character and attitude instead of skill, and why a culture problem is almost always an owner skill problem
• Jason's three layers of coaching (one on one accountability, industry-specific group coaching, and leadership coaching), which one to start with, and Coby's honest take on doing it backwards
• Michael Jordan's passing drills, the flu game, and what fundamentals actually look like in a home service business

Whether you have never worked with a coach or you are wondering if the group program you joined is the right fit, this one gives you a clear picture of what real accountability looks like and what it does to a business over ten years.

Hosted by Jason Call and Coby McManaman of Handyman Marketing Pros

👉 Schedule a free, no-pressure strategy call: https://go.handymanmarketingpros.com
👉 Grab the free 3-in-1 Handyman Playbook Bundle: https://go.handymanmarketingpros.com/playbooks
👉 Join the Home Hero Business Owner Community: facebook.com/groups/homeherocommunity

New episodes of the Home Hero Podcast every week. If you got value from this one, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more home service pros find the show.

The conversation delves into the challenges of time management for handyman contractors, highlighting the juggling act of balancing work, business management, and personal life. Strategies for managing time, the impact of pricing on time management, and tools and tricks for effective time management are explored in detail. The key takeaways emphasize the challenges faced by contractors and the critical role of pricing in time management.

Takeaways

• Time management challenges for handyman contractors
• The importance of pricing in time management

Hosted by Jason Call and Coby McManaman of Handyman Marketing Pros

👉 Schedule a free, no-pressure strategy call: http://go.handymanmarketingpros.com
👉 Grab the free 3-in-1 Handyman Playbook Bundle: http://go.handymanmarketingpros.com/p...
👉 Connect with us:
💻 Website: http://handymanmarketingpros.com
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/homeherocommunity

New episodes of the Home Hero Podcast every week. If you got value from this one, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more home service pros find the show.

The conversation explores new variables introduced by AI as a search platform for consumers, focusing on SEO and AI recommendations. It delves into review diversification, organic socials, brand mentions, and the increased value of websites in the context of AI and SEO.

Takeaways

• Review diversification is crucial for AI recommendations and SEO.
• Organic socials and community engagement are valuable for brand mentions and AI recommendations.
• Websites have become significantly more valuable in the context of AI and SEO, emphasizing the importance of helpful, informative content.
• Websites in AI and SEO

Hosted by Jason Call and Coby McManaman of Handyman Marketing Pros

👉 Schedule a free, no-pressure strategy call: http://go.handymanmarketingpros.com
👉 Grab the free 3-in-1 Handyman Playbook Bundle: http://go.handymanmarketingpros.com/p...
👉 Connect with us:
💻 Website: http://handymanmarketingpros.com
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/homeherocommunity

New episodes of the Home Hero Podcast every week. If you got value from this one, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more home service pros find the show.

For Taylor and Michael Robair, their story started with a simple problem: one income wasn't covering the bills, and staying home with their kids mattered too much to give up. So Michael started picking up $30 handyman jobs on Angie at night and on weekends, assembling furniture and hanging TVs while the app billed homeowners three times what he took home.

A few years later, they run Triangle Handyman Services in Raleigh, North Carolina with a small team, they did around $200K in the first half of 2026, and they're chasing a $500K to $600K year. This one is the honest version of how a family builds something real from scratch.

Taylor and Michael sit down with Jason and Coby to walk through it.

In this episode:

• How Michael turned cheap Angie jobs into loyal, direct, repeat clients he still serves today
• The Facebook group post that made Taylor realize handyman work is real money
• Going from $50 an hour to $145 to $198, and why they stopped telling clients their hourly rate
• Why they price every single job on the spot instead of emailing a quote later
• The hiring saga: why a Facebook jobs post beat Indeed, and the applicant who checked all 21 skill boxes straight from Waffle House
• Why they share their full profit and loss statement with their technicians
• The 21-day stretch that nearly ran them into the ground, and the 5 o'clock boundary that protects their family time now

If you're grinding through the startup phase or trying to make the jump to full-time, this one is packed with real numbers and honest decisions from a family figuring it out in real time.

Hosted by Jason Call and Coby McManaman of Handyman Marketing Pros

👉 Schedule a free, no-pressure strategy call: http://go.handymanmarketingpros.com
👉 Grab the free 3-in-1 Handyman Playbook Bundle: http://go.handymanmarketingpros.com/p...
👉 Connect with us:
💻 Website: http://handymanmarketingpros.com
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/homeherocommunity

New episodes of the Home Hero Podcast every week. If you got value from this one, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more home service pros find the show.