Chad M Peterman

Everybody obsesses over getting the customer and nailing the job. Almost nobody does the part where the real money actually lives. The first call makes the impression. The service earns the relationship. But the follow-up is what turns one job into ten years of that customer, and it’s the stage almost every company skips. You can win someone once and never hear from them again. Do great work nobody remembers. Or let a loyal customer walk straight to a competitor because you went quiet. Lifetime value isn’t won at the door. It’s won after.

Running a warehouse is a different business than running a contracting company, and I learned that the expensive way. We stood up our own distribution center, and it’s the part of the operation I understand the least to this day. We’re always learning on the fly, patching gaps we didn’t see coming. So here’s my advice if you’re not forced into it yet: lean on your supplier partners. Every dollar of inventory sitting on a shelf is a dollar you can’t use, and that cash drain adds up faster than you think.

I’m not always working, but I’m always thinking about it. There’s a difference, and it took me a while to see it. The business lives in my head rent free, even when I’m supposed to be present with my two little kids. I love what we do and I don’t take lightly how many people are counting on me. But that responsibility can quietly follow you into moments it was never meant to touch. I’m learning that enjoying the ride is part of the job too, not a distraction from it.

If I could hand my younger self one thing, it wouldn’t be more leads or more trucks. It would be our numbers. We were flying on gut for too long, and I can see now how much faster we’d have moved if the data had been in front of us. AI makes it almost effortless to get at today. Every department here leans into it now, not just to find what’s broken, but to find what’s working and actually celebrate it. Know your numbers sooner and you grow sooner.

Everyone wants to know how much AI we put in our call center. Here’s how we actually think about it. We run 13 people handling over a thousand inbound calls a day, and about half of those aren’t even leads. We use AI for overflow and after hours, and it beats any answering service we’ve tried. But the point was never to cut humans. It’s to let AI absorb the noise so our people can do the one thing a bot can’t, build a real relationship with the customer on the line.

The best decision I made early on wasn’t a hire or a new system. It was letting someone tell me I was wrong. From 2015 to around 2021 I had a coach, John Conway, who laid out the building blocks and held me accountable to actually putting them in. I knew what I didn’t know, and instead of pretending otherwise, I got help. That’s the part a lot of owners skip. Whether it’s a formal coach or a peer group, there’s something to learn in every single interaction.

The way an owner spends their next $10K tells you everything about whether they’ll grow. Pour it into your people and your ability to get customers and it compounds. Starve those to buy a shiny truck or chase the “perfect” tech stack and you’ve bought yourself nothing but overhead. More trucks in an inefficient operation doesn’t scale you, it magnifies what’s already broken. Put the money where it actually moves the business.

If your techs aren’t converting and your plan is a weekly service meeting, you’ve already lost. Sitting in the office hoping people get better doesn’t move a single number. What works is touches. Structured one-on-ones every other week, real KPIs and live examples on the table, and ride-alongs so you actually see where they’re stuck. We have a phrase here: be a dashboard warrior, not a keyboard warrior. Your people are in the field, so that’s where you need to be too.

The most expensive job you’ll ever run is the one you do twice for free. We call it the Z ticket. A tech rolls out, there’s a problem, and nothing gets solved. Or we’re back on a warranty for a mistake we already made. Either way, that’s a truck full of gas, parts, and a paid tech, all for zero revenue. Most owners never track these. The ones who do find money they didn’t know they were leaking.

The most dangerous place to be as an owner is comfortable. Every real jump we’ve made at Peterman came right after I put myself somewhere I didn’t totally belong yet. A room full of people further along, a conversation I wasn’t ready for, a stage that made me a little nervous. That discomfort is the signal you’re in the right place. The owners who stop seeking it out are usually the ones who stop growing.

15% net is where a lot of good companies land, but the problem is most owners don’t know if they’re looking at net or gross. 15% is what’s left after you’ve paid every bill, and it’s what you reinvest into trucks, training, and growth. Gross profit is the one you push toward 50%. When I look at acquisitions in that three to five million range, 15% net is the going mark. Can you beat it? Always. But first know your number.

The biggest disagreements I’ve had to navigate were almost never about the actual issue. They were about silence. Two people assuming the worst because neither one sat down and explained their side. So now when someone brings me a problem about a coworker, I ask if they’ve talked to that person yet. Usually they haven’t. Start there, and you’ll solve most of it before it ever reaches your desk.

Finding the right person for the role is a battle you never stop fighting. But most of the time, the problem isn’t the person. It’s the setup. It starts in the interview, matching who someone actually is to what the role needs. But the bigger piece is clarity. People have to know exactly what winning looks like. When someone thinks four is the goal and you needed six, that’s not a bad hire, that’s a job you didn’t define. Be transparent upfront about what success and a day in the life really look like. And don’t give up on people too fast. Sometimes we have to look inward and own that we never set them up to win in the first place.

A million-dollar month can still bleed you out. The revenue feels like a win. Everyone celebrates. High-fives. Hugs... But nobody looks at the labor line. Then the net profit never shows up and you’re left wondering where it went. Here’s the line I draw: labor needs to stay under 23% of top-line revenue. Over that, you’re losing money, no matter how good the month looks. The chain is simple: Control labor → protect gross profit Gross profit → covers overhead What’s left → net profit Break the first link and the whole chain fails before it reaches the bottom line. Revenue isn’t the scoreboard. Labor as a percentage is.

Most owners think better software is the answer, but it usually isn’t. The tools everyone else buys get you to the same place as everyone else. We put three engineers and a project manager on payroll to build on top of ours, and the whole point was to pull our techs out of the admin and back in front of the customer. That’s the part software can’t sell you.

2024 was the hardest year I’ve ever been through. The scary part is I didn’t see it coming because things looked great. Coming out of COVID, the phone was ringing off the hook. We couldn’t keep up, we were growing like a weed, and it felt like we could do no wrong. Then at the end of 2023, demand shut off like someone flipped a light switch, and suddenly all the things we’d overlooked came due. The truth is we were so enamored with the growth that we stopped watching the building blocks crumbling underneath us. Looking back, that year was the best thing that could have happened. It forced us to fix everything the good times let us ignore.

I’ve wasted money on almost everything owners think they need. Let me save you the lesson. The stuff that looks impressive, the fancy office, the over-loaded software, the branded giveaways, rarely moves your business an inch. Your customers never see your office, and nobody bought from you because of a koozie. What actually pays you back is investing in your people. Developing your team is the one spend that compounds, because it grows the humans who grow the company. Spend on what makes your people better, not on what makes you look better.

Everyone tells me six options is too many. My dashboard says otherwise. I hear it from owners all the time. I hear it from techs. “Too many choices confuses the customer.” “It feels like pressure.” Truth is, the data shows the opposite. There’s a direct correlation between how many options a tech presents and that tech’s total productivity. The techs who follow the system and give customers the most to choose from are our most productive people. Here’s why: options aren’t a sales tactic. They’re customer service. Presenting fewer options isn’t restraint. It’s deciding for your customer what they can afford, and what level of care they want. Lay it all out and let them choose. When you do, you'll see customers choosing you to take care of them. We track options per call as a KPI now. It predicts output better than most of what owners are already measuring.

A lot of owners are terrified to give a customer more than two options. We give six, and here’s why it works. Six sounds overwhelming until you realize it’s really three: option one and one plus, two and two plus, three and three plus. That turns a buying experience into a shopping experience, and nobody likes to buy, but everyone likes to shop. We hand the customer a menu and let them pick, mix, and customize until it’s exactly right. Offer less if you want, offer more if you want, but don’t assume more choice scares people off. In our experience, it’s the opposite.

The bigger your company gets, the less you should be in the room. At this level, I’m not in our daily huddles. Our regional managers run them with their managers, covering the daily blocking and tackling and any companywide initiative. I stay out and watch the dashboards to make sure we’re moving the right direction. That’s the shift most owners never make. Being in every meeting feels like leadership. Building people who can run those meetings without you actually is.