Before Ben Hewlett and his business partner Trey could worry about marketing budgets or equipment financing, they had to figure out how to schedule landscaping crews from the flight deck of a Navy carrier. Both men were active-duty F-18 Hornet pilots when they started their…

Two weeks into the launch of The Water Heater Company, Anthony Hamilton bailed on a water heater installation, took an Uber home, and went on a first date with the woman who is now his wife. At the time, the company had no reviews, no…

When Karen Crnkovich signed the papers to buy out her ex-husband’s share of DMC Service in March 2015, she started every morning the same way. Drop her daughter at school. Then, on the drive home, play Nappy Roots’ ‘Good Day’ loud enough to believe it….

John T. Hewitt has completed 57 consecutive tax seasons. He built one of the largest franchise systems in U.S. history, sold it, built a second one in Canada from scratch, brought it back to the United States to compete against his own name and software,…

When Mike Harvey told his first roofing prospects in 2021 that he could deliver a fully transparent proposal for a new roof in 30 minutes at up to 50 percent less than what traditional companies charge, roughly 100 of them said no. Not because his…

Matt Lowery didn’t plan to own a fence company. He spent nearly a decade managing maintenance for apartment complexes, handling air conditioner compressors on 115-degree rooftops and water heater leaks at 3 a.m., before a chance conversation with a friend put him on his first…

Eric Weishaar started Breckenridge Landscape in 2009. Not in a boom year, not with a clear runway, and not with the economy behind him. He launched a landscape construction company in southeast Wisconsin during the Great Recession, when most businesses were contracting rather than building…

Bob Logan never planned to run a plumbing company. When the concrete construction business he worked for collapsed during the 2008 recession, he joined Plum Line Services in February 2009, thinking it was temporary. Seventeen years later, he owns the largest residential home service company…

Chris Tiller called a customer back five minutes after they reached out. Five minutes. They had already hired someone else. “I called them back five minutes later and they’re like, sorry, I already found somebody else.” That single moment captures one of the hardest realities…

John Petersen wanted to fly the space shuttle. When that door closed, he spent 26 years building systems for an insurance company, rising from their first IT hire to CIO and helping the business grow from $20 million in annual revenue to over $200 million….