Dominic Rubino knows a painful truth about the trades: being great at your job has almost nothing to do with whether your business makes money. Growing up in an immigrant family of welders and framers, he watched talented contractors grind for years just to barely break even.

After nearly going bankrupt running his own house-painting business, Dominic realized he needed to stop acting like a tradesman and start acting like a CEO. He mastered the systems of business, eventually building and exiting a massive $120 million mail-order pharmacy empire. Today, Dominic is a high-level business coach dedicated to helping blue-collar entrepreneurs fix their pricing, build systems, and finally get paid what they’re worth.

If you are exhausted, underpriced, and tired of working 70-hour weeks just to survive, this episode gives you the exact blueprint to step out of the daily grind and into the owner's chair.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

You Are Not Your Customer: Why pricing jobs based on what you can afford is keeping your business broke, and how to confidently sell to high-ticket clients.

The 30% Close Rate Rule: Why you should actively try to lose 7 out of 10 bids, and how closing every estimate means you are severely underpricing your work.

The 40% Profit Target: Dominic breaks down the exact math of a healthy service business and why you must aim for 40% to 50% gross profit margins on every single job.

Calendar Selling: How to create genuine urgency and close deals faster by selling forward and backward through the customer's calendar.

The E-Myth Shift: The critical mindset shift from being a "flooring guy who runs a business" to a "business person who happens to do flooring."

Tags: Business consulting,Service & Consulting, Business scaling, Home Services, Business Growth

Resources:

If you’ve been putting off starting a business… good. Because before you jump into an idea that worked for someone else, you should figure out what kind of business actually fits you. That’s why we created the best Assessment there is. It’s a free tool that asks about your skills, experience, budget, goals, location, and preferences — then matches you with business ideas that make the most sense for YOU. The results are scary accurate. Click the link in the show notes to see your best-fit business ideas in seconds — for free.

UpFlip Assessment Tool: https://accelerator.upflip.com/assessment

Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify

Connect with Dominic Rubino: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicrubino/

Jen McKee knew something in 2021 that the rest of the trades industry didn't: local businesses can absolutely dominate on TikTok. When a local plumbing company agreed to test her strategy, they didn't just get views—they generated massive inbound leads, scored thousands of five-star reviews, and became an industry icon without spending a single dollar on ads.

As the founder of Key Heart Marketing, Jen specializes in turning plumbers, HVAC techs, and roofers into local social media stars. In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, she sits down with Ryan Atkinson to debunk the myth that you need to be a professional video editor or a dancing teenager to win on social media.

If you're a local business owner putting off content creation because of imposter syndrome or a lack of time, Jen provides the ultimate, stress-free playbook to turn your smartphone into a massive revenue driver.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Document, Don't Create: Why the highest-converting content doesn't require scripts or fancy edits—just an authentic selfie video explaining a problem at your daily job site.

• The 3 S's Framework: Jen's exact formula for balancing your content: Show Up (50% personal and relatable), Stand Out (30% thought leadership), and Scale (20% selling your services).

• The Video SEO Hack: How Google is actively indexing TikTok and Instagram videos for local search, and the exact keywords you must put in your bio and captions to rank in your specific city.

• The 4 C's of Consistency: The simple monthly planning strategy (Consistency, Calendar, Content, Commitment) that prevents burnout and allows you to run a full content calendar on just a few hours a week.

Tags: Digital marketing, Service & Consulting, Home Services, Entrepreneurship

Tired of guessing what business you should start? UpFlip’s Assessment can help — and it’s free. Answer a few simple questions about your skills, budget, experience, and what you enjoy doing, then get matched with business ideas that actually fit you best.  Click on the link to get started now: 👉 ⁠https://www.upflip.com/accelerator 

Resources:

• Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify 

• Connect with Jen McKee: https://www.instagram.com/keehartmarketing/

Brian Samson knows a harsh truth about the current American economy: if you run a service business right now, the math is brutal. Labor is incredibly expensive, turnover is high, and finding reliable operators can feel like a full-time job.

But Brian has a cheat code. After years of running talent acquisition for hyper-growth, VC-funded tech startups in Silicon Valley, Brian took his high-level recruiting playbook and applied it to a local locksmith and cleaning company in Hawaii. The result? He completely revolutionized his hiring process by tapping into the nearshore talent pool in Latin America. Today, Brian runs Plug Tech—a nearshore staffing agency pushing $8M in ARR—and he is pulling back the curtain on how small business owners can leverage global talent to generate massive ROI.

If you are struggling to scale because you are drowning in admin work, scheduling, or operations, this episode will completely rewrite how you think about building your team.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The VA vs. EA Paradigm Shift: Why you should stop hiring Virtual Assistants to do simple "tasks" and start hiring nearshore Executive Assistants who anticipate problems and drive strategy.

• Latin America vs. Asia: The cultural and operational differences between offshoring to places like the Philippines (process-driven) versus nearshoring to LatAm (spontaneous and creative problem-solvers).

• The Price-to-Value Arbitrage: Why paying a top-tier nearshore employee $1,500/month or an AI engineer is actually a massive bargain that can generate seven figures of value for your company.

• The $100 Interview Test: Brian’s foolproof, paid-test framework to filter out bad hires, test real-world skills, and guarantee you're bringing on an "A-Player."

Tags: Hiring, Entrepreneurship, Business scaling, Service & Consulting

Resources:

• Grow your business today: https://links.upflip.com/the-business-startup-and-growth-blueprint-podcast
• Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify
• Connect with Brian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson

Amber Farrell grew up watching her father dig ditches as a master plumber for 40 years. That upbringing gave her a genuine respect for blue-collar entrepreneurs—and a deep frustration watching them get sold expensive, unmeasurable marketing campaigns they didn't actually need.

After selling her first digital marketing agency, Amber launched Far Beyond Marketing to empower trade and home service business owners to cut the fluff and take control of their own growth. In this episode, Amber sits down with Ryan Atkinson to break down exactly where small businesses should spend their first marketing dollars (and what they should stop paying for immediately).

From mastering the "30 coffees in 30 days" networking method to leveraging AI agents to run your search engine optimization 24/7, this episode is a masterclass in building a high-converting, local marketing engine from scratch.

🎙️ What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The "30 Coffees" Networking Strategy: How to land your first 10 clients without spending a single dollar on advertising by leveraging your personal network.

• StoryBranding Your Business: Why clarity beats cleverness, and how to use AI (like Claude) to write the perfect elevator pitch and optimize your website for immediate conversions.

• Mastering Local SEO: The biggest mistake new trade businesses make online, and the exact steps to ensure your company ranks in the top five of local search results.

• Building AI Agents: How Amber uses AI to monitor SEO around the clock, generate social media content, and replace expensive traditional agency roles.

• The Retargeting Hack: Why running broad ads as a beginner is a mistake, and how to use pixel retargeting to dramatically increase the quality of your leads.

Tags: Digital marketing, Tech Ventures, Home Services, Service & Consulting, AI, Entrepreneurship, SEO

Resources

Grow your business today: https://links.upflip.com/the-business-startup-and-growth-blueprint-podcast 

Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify

Connect with Amber : https://www.instagram.com/farbeyondmarketing/

Kara Ward found herself in a nightmare scenario on April 1st, 2020: her husband unexpectedly lost his job, they had zero severance, and a staggering $60,000 in medical debt hung over their heads. Desperate to pay the mortgage, Kara dragged an old dresser into her garage, painted it with leftover wall paint, and posted a photo on Facebook. That single post sparked a life-changing side hustle.

Fast forward to today, Kara’s brand, Lemons to Lemonade Home, generates $250,000 a year between her furniture sales and her massively successful YouTube channel. Not only did she pay off all her debt, but she achieved complete financial freedom—all while working from her garage and homeschooling her kids.

In this episode, Kara sits down with Ryan Atkinson to explain exactly how anyone can replicate her business growth with just $50, an orbital sander, and an eye for hidden potential.

🎙️ What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The $5 China Hutch Hack: Kara reveals her ultimate furniture flipping secret for buying unwanted China hutches at estate sales for $5, splitting the top and bottom, and selling the separate pieces for over $2,500.

• Sourcing Inventory for Free: Where to look for the best free or cheap furniture—and the specific items (like coffee tables and bed frames) you should always avoid.

• Painting for Profit: Why you should ditch bold colors and stick to the "Pottery Barn aesthetic" (blacks, whites, and tans) to guarantee a quick, high-ticket sale.

• Monetizing the Journey on Social Media: How Kara caught the attention of Dave Ramsey's team and used her debt-payoff story to grow a YouTube channel to 150,000 subscribers, monetizing in just five months.

Tags: Furniture Flipping, Retail Goods, Side hustle, Entrepreneurship, Business growth, Social Media

Resources:

Grow your business today: https://links.upflip.com/the-business-startup-and-growth-blueprint-podcast 

Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify

Connect with Kara Ward: https://www.instagram.com/lemons_to_lemonade_home_tx/

Oleg Lee started with a simple request: he asked his dad to print a custom-shaped pillow of his late childhood dog, Izzy. When he posted a photo of the lifelike pillow on Facebook, the internet lost its mind. Today, that single viral moment has evolved into a $20 million-a-year manufacturing empire producing 400,000 custom pillows annually.

In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, Oleg breaks down his unbelievable entrepreneurial journey—from stuffing 20,000 pillows by hand in his dad's garage while working full-time in construction, to becoming the silent manufacturer behind massive brands like Netflix, Paramount, and Chewy.

Oleg shares exactly why he walked away from a massive retail deal with 2,000 Walmart stores to focus on direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales, how a $100,000 investment in a custom software tool doubled his revenue in a year, and the exact Instagram DM strategy he uses to land celebrity endorsements from David Dobrik, Paris Hilton, and Kim Kardashian.

🎙️ What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The Groupon to Walmart Hustle: How Oleg survived 20,000 overnight orders out of a garage, and the harsh reality of retail margins that made him walk away from Walmart.

• The $500K/Month Meta Ad Strategy: How to aggressively test batches of 150+ ads at a time, and why raw, authentic UGC (like an 8-second clip of a crying college student) outperforms highly edited marketing videos.

• The "GaryVee" DM Method: Oleg’s step-by-step formula for sliding into the DMs of A-list celebrities and massive corporations to secure lucrative wholesale deals and priceless social proof.

• Marathons & Mindset: Why Oleg intentionally puts himself through the physical torture of running a marathon in every state to build the mental resilience needed to handle $20M CEO problems.

Tags: E-commerce, Retail Goods, Digital marketing, Business growth, Facebook Ads, Online Business

Resources:

Grow your business today: https://links.upflip.com/the-business-startup-and-growth-blueprint-podcast

Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify

Connect with Oleg: https://www.instagram.com/allaboutvibe/?hl=en

Chris Heckman stared at his computer screen with a sinking feeling: his first major e-commerce store launch was a complete zero, leaving him with $100,000 in credit card debt. Instead of crawling back to the safety of his corporate job at Amazon, he adopted a "burn the boats" mentality, treated his failures as data, and built a print on demand (POD) powerhouse that has since generated over $25 million in total sales.

In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, Chris breaks down the realities of building an e-commerce brand from scratch. He explains how he bounced back from massive debt, why most beginners quit right before they find success, and the exact digital marketing strategies he uses today to generate over $1.1M a year without touching a single piece of inventory.

🎙️ What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The Print on Demand Playbook: How the POD model works, the true margins on a $35 item, and why it is the perfect low-risk business for entrepreneurs.

• Finding the 1% Winner: Why you need to launch 100 designs just to find one winner, and how to use a $50-a-weekend Facebook ad budget to test them effectively.

• Designing for Your Audience: Why your personal taste doesn't matter, and how to use sarcasm and dark humor to create shirts that people instantly connect with.

• The "Incubator" Effect: How moving into a house with 12 other hungry entrepreneurs rapidly accelerated Chris's business growth and skillset.

Tags: E-commerce, Retail Goods, Startup, Digital marketing, Print on Demand

Resources:

Grow your business today: https://www.upflip.com/course/print-on-demand-full-course Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify

Connect with Chris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisheckman

Steve Griggs transforms backyards into multimillion-dollar outdoor experiences. After 40 years in the landscaping industry, Steve has built a $5M/year design firm catering to high-net-worth clients—including lawyers, investors, athletes, and celebrities.

In this episode, Steve sits down with Ryan Atkinson to share the gritty reality of scaling a premium service business. From trimming bushes with his union-worker father in New York to starring on Bravo's Backyard Envy and authoring a best-selling book, Steve knows exactly what it takes to command top-tier prices. He explains why trying to be "good at everything" is a race to the bottom, why you should never just cut grass, and the exact strategy he recommends for landing your very first luxury client using nothing but a $500 investment and a yard sign.

If you're ready to stop competing on price and start becoming the undisputed expert in your market, this episode delivers the blueprint.

🎙️ What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The Free Yard Sign Strategy: How to land your first high-paying customers by offering free, creative work in wealthy neighborhoods to trigger word-of-mouth referrals.

• Commodity vs. Creative: Why services like laying pavers or cutting grass kill your margins, and how to pivot to high-profit, creative planting where you charge for the outcome, not the flower.

• Managing Elite Clients: The "no excuses" approach to project management that wealthy clients demand when things inevitably go wrong on a job site.

• Trust and Verify: Steve’s golden rule for hiring a team and stepping out of the day-to-day labor so you can focus purely on sales, marketing, and brand vision.

Tags: Home Services, Service & Consulting, Business mindset, Business scaling, Luxury Landscape

Resources

Grow your business today: https://www.upflip.com/course/start-a-landscape-design-business

Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify 

Connect with Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevegriggsdesign

Seif El-Sahly walked away from a comfortable, six-figure engineering career working in -50 degree northern mines to start a construction and renovation business in Hamilton, Ontario. Today, New Fort Inc. generates multiple seven figures a year, and Seif is breaking ground on massive 22-unit developments after successfully partnering with Home Depot and shooting a pilot for HGTV.

In this episode, Seif sits down with Ryan Atkinson to reveal how he transitioned from a mindset of "known variables" to mastering the unknown world of real estate investing and contracting. He breaks down his exact strategy for capitalizing on the booming ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) and garage conversion market—a niche that is solving the modern housing affordability crisis while generating premium rental income for investors.

Whether you're looking to buy your first investment property or scale a massive construction team, Seif delivers a masterclass on failing fast, taking action, and underwriting your deals the right way.

🎙️ What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The ADU Goldmine: Why garage-to-dwelling conversions are the ultimate real estate hack for generating premium rental income (and why ADU tenants are the highest quality).

• The 3 Rules for Your First Property: Forget analysis paralysis. Seif reveals the three fundamental things you must look for (Location, Bones, Tenant Pool) before diving into spreadsheets.

• Avoiding the Real Estate Bloodbath: The hidden running costs and development charges that completely wipe out new investors, and how to accurately underwrite your flips.

• The "Fail Fast" Mindset: Why A+ students often struggle in business, and how adopting an action-first mindset is the secret to scaling a 7-figure enterprise.

Tags: Remodeling, Retail Goods, Construction Company, Real estate, Property management

Resources

Grow your business today: https://links.upflip.com/the-business-startup-and-growth-blueprint-podcast 

Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify 

Connect with Seif: http://linkedin.com/in/seifelsahly/?originalSubdomain=ca

Victoria Westcott went from a burnt-out school teacher grading online lessons to the founder of a cleaning empire generating over $1.7 million in revenue—all starting with a free 21-day online course.

In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, Victoria pulls back the curtain on how she and her sister built Oak Bay Clean into a local powerhouse boasting 81% recurring revenue and over 200 five-star reviews. Unlike traditional commercial cleaning companies that undercut competitors and underpay staff, Victoria flipped the script. She implemented online booking, transparent pricing, and a revolutionary 60/40 revenue split that pays her cleaners roughly $45 an hour, paid out daily.

Whether you are looking to start a local service business or scale an existing side hustle to new heights, Victoria’s masterclass in local SEO, customer avatars, and treating your team like VIPs will give you the exact blueprint you need to succeed.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The Ultimate Naming Formula: How to practically guarantee page-one Google rankings by simply using the "Location + Keyword" naming strategy.

• Defining Your Ideal Customer Profile: Why you must build your business for "Jordan" (the busy, hands-off professional) and actively avoid "Nancy" (the micromanager).

• The 60% Talent Advantage: Why paying your cleaners significantly above the market rate actually increases your success, secures 5-star reviews, and eliminates turnover.

• The Day-One Pricing Strategy: A simple, competitive research method to perfectly price your services when you have absolutely zero experience.

• Landing Your First Client: How fully optimizing your Yelp and Google My Business profiles can get your phone ringing in under a week.

Stop competing in a race to the bottom and start dominating your local market with systems that work!

Tags: Cleaning Business, Retail Goods, Business Mindset, SEO, Side hustle, Google Rankings

Resources:

Grow your business today: https://links.upflip.com/the-business-startup-and-growth-blueprint-podcast

Follow Our Second Channel Here: https://next.upflip.com/spotify

Connect with Victoria: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoriawestcott/