William Powers III

Two years ago, if you asked a room of HVAC, plumbing, and electrical owners what they were doing with artificial intelligence, the honest answer from most of them was "writing job ads with ChatGPT." That answer is now embarrassingly out of date. The best-run residential contractors in the country are no longer experimenting with AI at the edges of the business. They are wiring it into three places where money is actually made or lost: the phone, the schedule, and the truck. The data backs...

Revenue targets are easy to approve. The harder job is building the management system that can deliver growth without giving back margin, exhausting good people, or disappointing customers. By the time 2027 begins, most residential contractors will have a budget, a sales target, and a list of initiatives. None of those proves the plan can survive a hot week, a soft shoulder season, a run of callbacks, or a sudden change in what homeowners can afford. A believable plan connects ambition to the...

September does not feel like the beginning of a new year. In residential home services, however, it is exactly when the next year begins. By September, you have enough 2026 operating data to see what is real. You know whether your replacement leads held up, whether your marketing produced booked calls instead of vanity metrics, whether your maintenance base grew, and whether your technicians and comfort advisors converted opportunities at an acceptable rate. You can see where gross margin...