NaiL It

Nathan Willard started in franchising in 2004 in the mailroom at Service Brands International, running the Pitney Bowes machine and washing mugs. From there he worked through accounting, royalties and training, helped launch the national accounts program for Mr. Handyman, and then ran Mr. Handyman of Ann Arbor himself with real P&L responsibility before selling it. Today he is president of two BELFOR Franchise Group brands: HOODZ, the commercial kitchen exhaust cleaning franchise, and The Patch Boys, the drywall repair brand.

He has seen 2008, the boom years, and COVID shutting down nearly every restaurant HOODZ served. We talk about what stays the same in the franchise systems that make it through all of it.

We get into:

• The Wednesday with nothing on the schedule and three technicians to pay

• How a cold walk-in turned IKEA into a revenue stream

• Why owners can't panic in front of their teams, and who to call instead

• COVID at a kitchen exhaust cleaning brand, and why fast food and drive-thrus kept it busy

• When the franchisees needed more labor than customers

• Why The Patch Boys sold so fast after the acquisition, and what slowed it down

• Low-ticket, high-volume home services and where the jobs come from

• Starting a franchise advisory council and going back to basics

• The three things that stay constant through 2008, COVID and today

• Candidates who want "something AI can't touch," and the shortage of tradespeople

Chapters:

0:00 Who Nathan Willard is

1:32 Starting in the mailroom: crawl before you walk

3:15 Taking over Mr. Handyman of Ann Arbor

5:08 Running it by the franchisor's book

6:16 An empty schedule and three techs to pay

8:14 How a cold walk-in landed IKEA

9:09 "You can't panic"

10:28 The tightrope: don't look down

11:52 Call your coach, not your kitchen table

13:28 Live and die with the P&L

14:11 COVID hits a kitchen exhaust cleaning brand

14:43 Recession-resistant, tested

15:45 Why fast food and drive-thrus kept HOODZ busy

17:50 Hospitals, schools and military kitchens

19:35 The glory years: more labor than customers

20:28 Recruiting technicians on social media

21:01 HOODZ as the household name of a fragmented market

23:46 The Patch Boys: sold fast, then stalled

25:50 Low ticket, high volume home services

27:25 Where Patch Boys jobs come from

28:24 DIY mistakes and realtors

30:01 Training on the BELFOR campus

30:54 Starting a franchise advisory council

31:56 Back to basics: networking and webinars

32:49 Why he does it: paying it forward

36:09 Surround yourself with good people

36:49 What survives 2008, COVID and today

39:34 "Something AI can't touch"

40:49 5 retiring, 2 entering the trades

42:28 How BELFOR brands use AI

44:04 Where to find Nathan

—

Nathan Willard

President, HOODZ and The Patch Boys (BELFOR Franchise Group)

Search "HOODZ International" or "The Patch Boys", or find Nathan on LinkedIn.

George Paladichuk runs NaiL. We answer the phones and manage the leads for franchise systems and home service brands. usenail.com

Nick Ridgway didn't start in franchising. He started as an apprentice carpenter, moved into home service management at TruGreen and Scotts Miracle-Gro, and then took a franchise support role at PIRTEK, where the owner's instruction was simple: get the franchisees to like us.

That job turned into years of building PIRTEK's franchise development process and then leading franchise development at Matco Tools. Across those two systems, Nick helped award more than 400 franchise locations. Now he is VP of Franchise Development at Service Experts, an HVAC brand that ran corporate-owned for more than 30 years before it started franchising in 2025. In its first year of franchising it debuted at No. 117 on the Franchise Times Top 400.

We talk about why franchising runs on trust more than process, why Nick won't change the franchise agreement for anyone, and why the owners who call marketing an expense usually aren't ready to grow.

We get into:

• Why franchise owners are dreamers, and why that makes every deal an emotional decision

• How the Mr. Electric turnaround came from trust, not a new model

• What emerging brands get wrong about their first 10 to 20 franchisees

• "Just get them to like us": rebuilding trust at PIRTEK by riding with techs and visiting customers

• Small business ownership as a tightrope, and what happens when owners look down

• The owner who had never paid a bill late, and why that made him panic

• Getting owners who have never sold to adopt outbound sales

• "If they tell me it's an expense, that tells me what level we're at"

• Google reviews, organic content, and showing up in AI search

• The three things every home service business has to be good at

• Why Service Experts only takes owner-operators

• One franchise agreement for everyone, and walking away from deals to keep it that way

• Why the agreement should go in a drawer and stay there

Chapters:

0:00 Who Nick Ridgway is

1:30 Why franchising runs on relationships, not process

2:54 Joel Worthington and the Mr. Electric turnaround

4:56 What emerging brands get wrong

7:01 Building the support team one hire at a time

8:04 Hiring for resilience

9:58 Dinners, meet-the-team days and tracking every touchpoint

10:55 Do early hires grow with the brand?

12:00 PIRTEK: "Just get them to like us"

14:13 The cost of little to no communication

16:13 Small business ownership is a tightrope

18:34 The owner who had never paid a bill late

20:16 When owners stop looking down

22:35 Focus is the most valuable skill

23:52 Coaching mindset vs. selecting for it

25:12 Getting owners to adopt outbound sales

26:48 Why owners push back on sales

27:54 "If they tell me it's an expense..."

29:19 The chiropractors who refuse to advertise

31:45 Google reviews are getting watered down

32:33 Organic content and AI search

34:30 Owl Roofing's first year

35:37 The three things every home service business must do

37:30 Employ for your weakness

38:29 Why Service Experts only takes owner-operators

40:36 "I can't get my guys to take videos"

44:38 Entertainment vs. educational content

46:59 "Marketing is brainwashing"

47:42 One franchise agreement for everyone

49:42 Walking away from deals

51:12 Put the agreement in a drawer

52:45 Expectation and communication

56:23 Franchisor success is franchisee success

58:15 Follow up and follow through

59:26 What's next for Service Experts

1:01:51 Ranked #117 in year one

—

Nick Ridgway

VP of Franchise Development, Service Experts

serviceexperts.com/franchising

George Paladichuk runs NaiL. We answer the phones and manage the leads for franchise systems and home service brands. usenail.com

Mike Feazel and his brother Todd spent 25 years building Feazel Roofing into one of the biggest roofing companies in Ohio. Then shingles started getting thinner and failing faster. They sold the company in 2013, picked up the rights to a soybean-based formula that had been made for asphalt roads, and built an industry that did not exist yet: roof rejuvenation.

Today Mike is co-founder and CEO of Roof Maxx, a network of 300+ dealers with more than 20,000 reviews at 4.9 stars. There is no franchise fee. Dealers buy the product and lease a territory, and Roof Maxx spent just over $20 million on advertising last year to build one national brand.

Then, around this time last year, Google went all in on AI Overviews. Mike's average lead cost went from about $350 to well over $600, tripled in some markets, and Roof Maxx shut off its national marketing for the first time in three years. This is what he learned rebuilding it, and why he calls the last 12 months the biggest change he has seen in 40 years of home services.

We get into:

• Why roof rejuvenation had to be sold under a brand, and why roofers didn't want to touch it at first

• The perfect storm in roofing: harder leads, insurance pulling back, and private equity moving in

• Why a dealer model instead of a franchise, and how leasing territory works

• How Mike thinks about copycats, competitors, and dealers who leave

• Getting thrown out of the house for starting his own roofing company, and the email he got 35 years later

• The day Google flipped the switch, and what the zero-click crisis did to Roof Maxx's leads

• A national company that went from $90M in EBITDA to $7M in a year

• Why the one channel he says won't get disrupted is door-to-door

• AI Overviews, Meta's Andromeda update, and why podcasts help AI understand your business

• What Roof Maxx is doing now to bring lead costs back down

• Embracing failure, and the advice he gave his nephew

Chapters:

0:00 Who Mike Feazel is

1:39 Why roof rejuvenation instead of roofing

2:59 A patent that sat on the shelf for two decades

4:54 Commercial roofing already made this shift

5:48 Why roofers didn't want to be dealers

6:58 The small jobs the big roofers leave behind

10:26 The perfect storm in roofing

11:26 Insurance roofs went from 3% to 33%

11:47 Private equity and lifetime customer value

13:50 Door knockers and $100M in three years

15:45 Don't tell the customer what they need

16:45 Why a dealer model instead of a franchise

17:48 $20M in advertising and a national brand

20:34 Leasing territory instead of selling it

21:06 Copycats and competition

24:39 When a dealer leaves to compete

28:52 Thrown out for starting a roofing company

29:37 An email 35 years later

33:42 The day Google flipped the switch

36:53 Lead costs from $350 to over $600

37:53 AI agents and the end of websites

38:40 $90M in EBITDA to $7M

39:51 The biggest change in 40 years

40:40 AI Overviews and Meta's Andromeda update

45:29 Teaching the AI who you are

47:30 A handwritten newsletter in the AI era

48:55 Bringing lead costs back down

51:00 When the whole network is down on revenue

53:03 Small businesses are failing faster

54:17 Learn to embrace failure

56:01 Where to find Mike

57:00 Roofing's restructuring is the opportunity

—

Mike Feazel

Co-founder and CEO, Roof Maxx

roofmaxx.com

George Paladichuk runs NaiL. We answer the phones and manage the leads for franchise systems and home service brands. usenail.com

Jeremy Morgan bought a College Pro Painters franchise in 1996, at Nebraska, for a blunt reason: his parents told him the diploma would have his name on it, so it would also have his bill. He says the real lesson of those years was not in the classroom, it was figuring out how to pay for it. Almost 30 years later he has launched close to 600 franchisees into home services.

He trained new owners at CertaPro, ran operations at Spray-Net, was COO at Home Run Franchises, and most recently led Groovy Hues Painting, Bumble Bee Blinds and Mighty Dog Roofing as group president at HorsePower Brands. Today he is CEO of Groovy Hues Painting.

This is a conversation about why painting is the most underrated business in home services, and about the leadership habit underneath his whole career: when a franchisee is not performing, look at your own training before you decide it is their character.

We get into:

• Why painting sits in the gap between one-time big-ticket trades and commoditized routine services

• The lifetime value math: a painter is in a home every two to seven years, and eight times in 21 years in his own

• Why gross margins in painting beat the trades carrying heavy material cost

• The three wins every quote has to hit, and what happens to a system when labor is the one that loses

• "Convenience and ease are the currency of our day"

• What a guest bedroom actually tickets, soup to nuts, and how long it takes

• Why home maintenance turned into home fashion, and what HGTV and Pinterest did to the category

• Capturing proof instead of manufacturing it, in a feed people no longer trust

• Misattribution bias, and the difference between a character flaw and a training failure

• Knights of the round table: why his leadership team has no hierarchy, and the marketing manager who told him to stop being a dumb dumb

• Why no franchise system makes money on an owner in the first three years, and what it still owes them in year 13

• Serving a brand-new owner and a $20M operator inside the same playbook

• The Dictaphone in his shirt pocket in 1996, and the AI note-taker doing the same job today

• Why AI belongs on the bottleneck, not on whatever is easiest to automate

• Stewardship: every owner and every corporate person eventually takes the logo off their chest

—

Jeremy Morgan

CEO, Groovy Hues Painting

linkedin.com/in/jeremynmorgan

groovyhues.com/own-a-franchise

horsepowerbrands.com

George Paladichuk runs NaiL. We answer the phones and manage the leads for franchise systems and home service brands.

usenail.com

Steve Lane was on a pre-law track at Gonzaga until he spent time working at a law school and realized he had made a mistake. He was too far into the degree to switch, so he bought a College Pro Painters franchise instead — at 19, on the Idaho–Washington border. A month in he had sold nothing and was in last place out of about thirty new owners in his division. He finished the year as Rookie of the Year for the West Coast division and stayed with the company for 13 years.

He has spent the 20 years since on both sides of the table: coaching roughly 25 new owners a year as a general manager at College Pro, then 360 Painting, then VP of the launch division at Premium Service Brands. Today he is Director of Franchise Development at Handyman Connection — a brand that FirstService Brands, the company that franchised him in the first place, owned for its first 20 years.

This is a conversation about what he can actually read in a candidate, why he puts them in the field with a real owner before they ever put money down, and what he thinks AI does and doesn't change about home service.

We get into:

• The month he went without selling a single job, and the one thing his coach caught

• Why asking for the job was the hardest sentence for him to say

• The crisis of meaning, and the worst thing an owner can do when they hit it

• What he wishes someone had told him before he signed at 19

• The traits he looks for, and the one that quietly ends a candidacy: ego

• Why a candidate who overanalyzes the purchase will overanalyze the first hire too

• Speed of decision-making as a signal, read before anyone signs anything

• Sending candidates to spend a day in the field with a franchise owner, and what he watches for

• "A good day is when I can sit back and do nothing" — letting the candidate drive the conversation

• Group validation calls, and the two-day mentor trip before training week

• The $1,000 average ticket nobody bothers to shop around

• Virtual estimates, and the franchisees doing 75% of their sales without leaving the office

• Why he thinks millennials and Gen Z pay up for a brand they can trust

• Monthly AI calls with franchisees, and owners building their own call centers

• Still an operator: rentals, a vacation rental, and a food business at farmers markets

—

Steve Lane

Director of Franchise Development, Handyman Connection

[email protected]

franchiseopportunity.handymanconnection.com

George Paladichuk runs NaiL. We answer the phones and manage the leads for franchise systems and home service brands. usenail.com

Chris Lee built Sol Gen Power out of his garage in 2017 with a simple five-year plan and scaled it to 1,100 employees and $233M in annual revenue before selling to private equity. He's also filed bankruptcy, nearly buried his company with a cash flow crisis, and spent six miserable weeks in retirement before going right back to work.

In this episode of the NaiL It Podcast, Chris pulls back the curtain on all of it: the real mechanics behind a nine-figure exit, why most home service businesses are worth far less than their owners think, how bad culture quietly destroys companies, and why the biggest threat to your growth isn't the market or your competition -- it's you.

We also get into AI in home services, when automation helps and when it hurts, and what it actually takes to build something people want to be a part of.

We cover bankruptcy, rebuilding, and what actually changed the second time. Scaling from $16M to $233M and the cash flow crisis that almost ended it. Why talent problems are really vision and culture problems. Equity as your most underutilized growth tool. How to value your business and what PE actually looks for. The four pillars: physical, economic, associations, and spirituality. AI's role in home services and where the line is.

Chris Lee is the founder of Sol Gen Power and CEO of Next Level Pros, a 23,000 sq ft home service accelerator in Pasco, WA with a community of hundreds of operators scaling toward nine figures.

Follow Chris: @chrisleequb on Instagram

Join us for an engaging episode as we sit down with Randy Hurtado, COO of the Good Contractors List and co-owner of the DT Companies. Randy shares his journey from the tech and IT cybersecurity industry into home services, where he helped grow DT Roofing from under $2 million to over $30 million in revenue. We discuss Randy's philosophy behind the Good Contractors List—which aims to connect homeowners with vetted, reliable contractors. Randy plans to take this trusted local solution nationwide and transform the way contractors and homeowners do business. Whether you’re a homeowner in need of quality services or a contractor looking to expand your market, this episode is packed with valuable insights and actionable advice.

——————————————————————————————————————————

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:51 Randy's Background and Career Transition

01:56 The Good Contractors List: Mission and Expansion

04:01 Challenges and Solutions for Contractors

12:50 Randy's Journey from IT to Roofing

29:13 Real Estate Roofing Opportunities

31:27 Building Relationships with Real Estate Agents

33:21 Engaging with Insurance Agents

36:29 Personal Journey and Success Story

41:05 Growing the Good Contractor List

50:38 Future Vision for the Good Contractor List

Kelly Mesaris is COO of LB Capital, the roofing holding company built by Lance Bachmann that's pacing $160M+ in revenue across 10 partner companies, with a mission to land the largest exit in roofing history.

In this episode Kelly breaks down the exact playbook LB Capital runs to take roofing companies from the $4-6M "swamp" to $20-25M in 16-18 months, including the Munz Roofing story: $3M to a $36M exit in under a year and a half.

We get into:

- Why LB Capital takes 50% and full operational control, not a full buyout

- The traits that get you rejected as a partner candidate (before the numbers even matter)

- Why lead aggregators work when your speed-to-lead doesn't, and the automation stack behind a 9-16X ROAS

- Budgeting backward from a revenue target to a daily "win the day" number

- The one-sentence mental shift Kelly says separates operators who scale from operators who stay stuck

If you're running a home service business between $4M and $10M and thinking about what comes next, this is the episode.

Holly Murry spent nearly three decades at FRSTeam, starting as a 22-year-old technician and rising all the way to Brand President. In this episode she breaks down why contents restoration is really a people business, and how her teams show up on the worst day of someone's life to bring back the things money can't replace. The kid's stuffed animal. The military flag passed down for generations. The wedding gown. The heirlooms.

George and Holly get into how you systematize an emotional moment without making it feel like a pipeline, the "first 15" framework her teams run the second they arrive at a loss, and the surprising restaurant test Holly uses to find out who a person really is before she ever hires them. They also dig into the hardest balance in any franchise: empathy without accountability will sink a business, so when do you stop caring and start firing fast.

Holly also opens up about handing the FRSTeam brand to Jeff Waters at Empower Brands' Ignite 2026, what it feels like to step away from something you built over 30 years, and where she thinks automation is about to make customer service better, not worse.

In this episode:

• Why restoration is really about restoring people, not property
• How to train and standardize empathy across an entire franchise system
• The "first 15" framework for the first moments on a loss
• The restaurant test that reveals a candidate's true character
• Empathy vs accountability, and why caring too much makes you fire too slowly
• Handing off a brand you built and trusting the next leader to run with it

About the guest: Holly Murry is the Director of Franchise Development at FRSTeam and its former Brand President. FRSTeam is a national leader in contents restoration, recovering textiles, electronics, and personal belongings damaged by fire, smoke, water, and mold, and is part of the Empower Brands family. Connect with Holly on LinkedIn or at frsteam.com.

About the show: The NaiL It Podcast is hosted by George Paladichuk, founder of NaiL, the AI voice receptionist built for multi-location home service brands and franchise systems. NaiL answers every call, qualifies leads, books jobs, and follows up automatically so operators never lose revenue on the phone. Learn more at usenail.com.

If you got value from this one, subscribe and leave a review. It helps more operators find the show.

#Franchising #HomeServices #Restoration #FRSTeam #Leadership #EmpowerBrands #NaiLItPodcast

Mike Potts has been building custom software for middle market companies since 2008 without raising a dollar of outside capital. His firm, Feature23, carries a 95% client success rate in an industry where 70% of projects fail.

In this episode, Mike breaks down exactly why that gap exists and what it costs companies who get it wrong.

We get into the understanding gap, the reason most technology projects fail before a single line of code gets written. We talk about the operational tax, the hidden cost of bad software that never shows up on a balance sheet but shows up everywhere else. And we talk about what actually made Superior Fence and Rail acquirable, and why their technology stack was cited in the transaction as a core driver of value.

Mike also shares his take on the build vs. buy decision, why most mid-market companies default to off-the-shelf solutions that quietly erode their competitive advantage, and the one question every franchise operator should be asking before making any technology investment.

This one is dense. Worth a full listen.

Topics covered:

• Why the average software failure rate is still above 70%
• The understanding gap and how it kills projects from day one
• What Feature23 calls the operational tax and how to spot it
• Build vs. buy for franchise operators and when each decision is right
• How Fence360 contributed to SFR's acquisition outcome
• Why bootstrapping forces better client decisions
• The impact mapping framework Mike uses to invert how clients think about technology
• AI in the middle market, what's working, what's overhyped, and where the real gains are

Connect with Mike: feature23.com | LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/hackmp/