Scaling a Home Services Business

Guest: David Williams, CEO, Advantage Services Group (ASG)
Host: Alex Rawlings

David Williams joins Alex to share how he transitioned from consulting into entrepreneurship through acquisition — and scaled a home services platform to $100m+ in revenue in just five years.

Since acquiring his first HVAC business in Oregon during COVID, David has completed 10 acquisitions, expanded into three states, and grown organically at ~20% annually. His focus? Building one fully integrated company — not a loose roll-up of brands.

🕒 Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction & David’s background
01:57 – Choosing entrepreneurship through acquisition
02:51 – Why HVAC, plumbing & electrical?
03:48 – Moving to Oregon & first acquisition
04:16 – Growth to $100m+ revenue
07:57 – From small business to scalable platform
08:54 – Pillar 1: Infrastructure
09:50 – Pillar 2: Systems & integration
11:19 – Pillar 3: Building strong GMs
12:16 – Pillar 4: Culture as a CEO responsibility
15:08 – Core belief: Operating with urgency
17:56 – Why integration is about people, not spreadsheets
21:42 – Earning trust post-acquisition
24:05 – Book & podcast recommendations

Key Takeaways

• Durable industry thesis: Large, fragmented, non-discretionary market.
• Integration focus: ASG builds one company with shared systems and culture.
• Leadership bench: Strong GMs drive performance.
• Culture is deliberate: Clear beliefs — not designed for everyone.
• Urgency wins: Speed in customer service and decision-making is core.
• M&A is emotional: Time on the ground builds trust and long-term alignment.

Raw Selection partners with Private Equity firms and their portfolio companies to secure exceptional executive talent. We focus on de-risking executive recruitment through meticulous search and selection processes, ensuring top-tier performance and long-term success.

🔗 Connect with Alex Rawlings on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexrawlings/

🌐 Visit Raw Selection www.raw-selection.com

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Transcript

00:00
Welcome back to the Royal Selection Private Equity Podcast. Joining us today is David Williams, CEO of Advantage Services Group, a HVAC electrical and plumbing services company  based in the US.  Here's the story of how they're scaling,  how their journey is going, of growing a home services  platform.  David, do you want to share a brief insight into you, Yeah.  Well, Alex, first, thanks for having me here. So excited to do this with you guys.

00:30
So a little bit of background on me and then I'll give you a background on ASG and Advantage Services group as a whole too. So my background, you know, grew up in outside of Baltimore, Maryland, you know, went to college up in Boston at Boston College and then really started my career down in New York City, moved to New York, worked for a big consulting firm, know, spent about three years there. you know, look, I very quickly realized like this is, you know, I wasn't going to go more typical corporate route. Like I, my goal was to...

00:58
I want to get involved in a business and an industry and do something a little bit more entrepreneurial. Like I want to go use, you know, I want to go build my career and build a, go build a company. Um, you know, my dad was a entrepreneur built a marketing services business over the course of my life. So, you know, ultimately that was a big kind of influence on me. And, know, as I kind of entered the workforce, Michael's like, how am I, how could I go possibly go do something like that? So, you know, very quickly into my career, I just started pivoting to like, I need, I'm going to find a way to go do something entrepreneurial.

01:27
Like I wasn't, you know, certainly the more typical route of going out doing more of a Silicon Valley startup, like that wasn't me. I wasn't going to, you know,  invent something technologically. So it's like, how do I get involved in a business and how do I get involved in an industry that I can go build my career at? So, you know,  I dabbled around kind of the lower middle market, private equity world, mostly in the context of, trying to figure out, looking at different businesses, trying to figure out how to go buy a business and ultimately went to grad school, went, got my MBA at the University of Chicago.

01:57
And I spent most of those two years trying to figure out how could I go, you know, ultimately go acquire a business in an industry that I think has a super long time horizon that I could go spend the next 20 plus years of my career building the business. So, you know, really in the back half of my second year of business school, I'd make the leap. I had sort of had some job offers in front of me and made the leap of saying, look, I'm going to go, I'm going to go work at this full time. I'm going to make this jump by it's kind of.

02:22
balancing the need between, should I go get some other business experience? Should I go get some private equity experience or should I make the leap? And I basically said to myself,  I'm either gonna do this now or life's gonna start and I'm never gonna do it. So I've ultimately started looking at all different kinds of industries  but got very focused in on home services, HVAC, plumbing, electrical specifically, which certainly has a lot of attention these days.  And  I looking all across the country.

02:51
Right, so my view at that time, I was living in Maryland at the time, it was peak COVID, so there wasn't a lot of travel and things going on, but I started looking all across the country with the view of I'm gonna relocate to wherever this business is, and I'm gonna learn this business from the ground up. I, ultimately I looked down in Florida and Texas and Tennessee, up and down the East Coast, and I ultimately got introduced to a business out in Oregon. So my joke is I had never been to Oregon, I had no intentions of ever going to Oregon, but ultimately,

03:21
you know, flew out, met the owners of that business, and it felt like a good culture fit. I mean, I got to meet some of the key team members and, you know, the owners had met a lot of the, you know, bigger buyers in our space and were excited about the idea of kind of passing their business off and selling it to the next generation. So, you know, in October of 2020, you know, I moved out to Oregon full-time and jumped really face first into the heating and air world.  You know, I didn't know anybody in Oregon at the time. It was really a big kind of

03:48
personal move, but I was really saying, look, I want to jump into this business. since then, that was really the founding of Advantage Services. since then, we've done, it's been about five years now, we've done 10 acquisitions, we've grown the business about 20 % on average organically over the last five years. And we're in three states, we have eight locations. We just did a recent acquisition in January that brought us up over the $100 million mark.

04:16
Look, my view is we're kind of just getting started here. Like we're in the very early innings of kind of the company we're trying to build. So that's kind of the very quick and dirty version of kind of what we're doing. The origin story of ASG here. um, so  obviously found HVAC services. What was it about HVAC services, plumbing, electrical that made you choose that industry over obviously all the others get considered? Yeah. So I look to be candid at the start.

04:43
When I was thinking about what I really wanted to do, I didn't care what the industry was. I just wanted to get involved in an industry that I thought I could go then build a business for the next 20 years. uh So in some ways, a lot of people talk about, you know, the industry dynamics and things like that, and, this is applicable to my previous background. Like I can't really didn't care.  I mean, the first business I ever looked at was a Styrofoam manufacturing company. uh So to be candid, I'm happy I didn't get into the Styrofoam manufacturing business. There's some, you know, kind of negative.

05:12
headwinds in that business kind of environmentally.  what attracted me to Home Services really, it's like, look, big market, it's not going away, people need it, and it felt like something I could get my hands around. mean,  it's a $100 billion plus market between each back plumbing and electrical. There's 100,000 plus businesses in the space. And my view is there's a lot of opportunity.  the services we provide,  there's going to be technological change, there's going to be industry change, but 20 years from now.

05:39
You know, people are still going to need heating and air conditioning in their homes. And, you know, when their water heater goes out, they're going to want hot water. ah So that's ultimately what drove the decision. it's turned out to be, it's turned a lot of those things have turned out to be true while the space continues to be extremely competitive. So a lot of people are attracted to those dynamics. Absolutely. It's a popular space. so your transition, you're in the financial services sector, fairly broad, Blackstone, Accenture, Kinsey,  to now being a CEO. How did you find that transition? Yeah.

06:09
Yeah, so I mean, look, we're five years into that transition. I would say, look, there's a dynamic of nothing can prepare you for being a CEO except being a CEO. So there's this dynamic of like even for me at the start to say, hey, you know, should I go get some more experience here? The reality is there's really nothing that can help you for that transition except actually starting. So like I talked to a lot of people who are either in business school thinking about going to buy a business. Well, what should I do before? I'm like, just get going.

06:38
ah So like for me, look, think  experience kind of early work experience certainly gave me a lot of good exposure to like what good looks like and you know, what a professional, how a professional organization is run. But ultimately a lot of that experience has come from actually getting in the seat. And I think for me is like, if I look back five years ago,  you know, in some ways I  like was, you know, very inexperienced, right? And I've made a lot of mistakes and-

07:05
But ultimately, five years out, you're just drinking from the firehose of experience. And I think my view is, as I think about how I've kind of matured into my role, one is experience. And then two is just you've got to be kind of looking for outside resources. So look, I'm a big reader, I'm a big consumer of podcasts and things like that. It's like, I got to go learn it from people who've been there. And  to me, sort of that financial services background, a little bit of M &A experience certainly have been helpful.

07:31
accounting experience, things like that. Certainly helpful as sort of a foundational layer, but I mean, all of my sort of CEO experience has all come from basically just getting in, jumping into the fire of really, and learning on the job. just don't think there's any other way to do it personally. Yeah. I mean, just got to jump from one fire to another fire, hoping that that's the right fire to put out.  That's for me. Well, I  it. So talk to us about.

07:57
That journey, so you mentioned kind of five years ago making our first acquisition, obviously during the dark COVID times, now over a hundred million in revenue with EGISG Growth. Talked to us, mean, fair bit to fill in there, but talked to us about how that journey's gone and your experiences of it. Yeah, yeah. So I think, look, one is when we jumped in, you know, in some ways, the business we originally acquired was in central Oregon, so kind of a rural part of the Oregon market.

08:25
was about 70 or so employees, primarily out of one location, kind of a  smaller location down in the southern part of Oregon. But this is sort of,  strong brand, been around for 30 years, but this is your classic small business, right? So I think that  this journey has really been about how do we make the transition from, hey, look, this is small business to now we're trying to really kind of grow the business up to really build something of more scale. So I think over the last five years, if I had to really,  in some ways I could-

08:54
tell you a lot of ups and downs along that journey. But if  I could really think about, it's really that transition from, how are we going from small business to building something that's more  scalable, right? So  I really think about it kind of in four quadrants. So like one is, the first and the simplest is like,  we spent a lot of time kind of building the infrastructure for the business we wanna be, right? So if I look back even, we were  a year after our first acquisition, probably 18 months after our first acquisition,

09:21
We had done three more acquisitions. We were at three accounting systems. It was a challenge, right? So like me very much, like our initial focus was I got to build the infrastructure for the business we want to be, right? So that's accounting infrastructure, HR, IT. You  know, we ultimately built an in-house marketing team, things of that nature so that we can ultimately build a business of Skip. ah So like that infrastructure, and that was challenge. I mean, it's hard to go from, you know, hey, we've got a business, kind of small business.

09:50
infrastructure to something where,  look, we can close the books in five days type thing.  Um, so that was step one. So I think step two is where we really focused on now I'm focused on like building the systems. Right. So when I, I, I really, talk a lot of like at ASG, we are focused on building one company. Right. So we don't want to be a collection of different brands. We don't consider ourselves really like a roll up strategy. Like we are focused on building one integrated company with one culture, one management system.

10:20
that one really kind of vision for what we're trying to build. you know, yes, we go to market through local brands, but we really are focused on, we believe we're stronger together, right? Like through information sharing, a common way of doing things, best practices. So we have been very focused. Like we want to be the most integrated and operationally excellent home services platform. That's what we're doing. And the reality is, look, that's very, it's work. So I think for us, like the idea that we're going to go out and do 20 acquisitions in a year,

10:50
candidly,  it's intimidating to me  because when we go do a deal, we are very focused on how we integrating this business into our business. So that second  leg of the  four pillars I'm talking about is building those systems.  What's our goal setting process look like? How do we think about our meeting cadence? How do we set objectives? And then really teaching our team, this is how we want to build this company and these are the tools we use to do that.

11:19
That was really number two. think number three is really focused on like, now we've got to build the team, right? So if you think about, you know, typically a small, a, you know, a single location HVAC company is very owner driven, right? So the reality is in a lot of these businesses and there's, you know, there's typically a few key people, but the owners are wearing a lot of hats, right? So it starts to become about, we just got very focused on, okay, we need to start to build a bench of people that can ultimately help us to go build this company.

11:46
I mean, for us, certainly it's like key executive hires, CFO, CMO, things like that. But really the meat of that is general managers, right? Who are running these shops. And we got very focused on, we need to get the best possible general managers we can into these businesses. You show me a business that's underperforming and I'll show you a business nine times out of 10 that has weak management. So for us, just all became about how do we really build a team of managers

12:16
you know, starting with the GMs going up to kind of more regional infrastructure, but then down into the departments that really is they're aligned with us. They know our systems, they're incentivized to what we're trying to build and that we really are aligned. So that was kind of pillar number three. And then pillar number four, I think, you know, what's really driven a lot of our success over the last four years is like, we are just laser focused on building the culture that we want to build. Right. So like our view, like in some ways, like for us, I think culture is probably one of the most overused terms in business and

12:46
I think sometimes it could be thought of as more of an HR topic. Like I don't view culture as an HR topic. Culture is my job as the CEO. So like we are very focused on building a sort of an aspirational culture of this is who we want to be. So it's really driven by, look, here are our beliefs as a company. And then ultimately they drive behaviors. And I think for us, like we've been focused on our culture is not for everyone. Like it's not meant to be kind of one size fits all.

13:13
We are trying to create a culture that really binds our company together because we're trying to go on a mission. We're trying to go out and climb a mountain that, you know, 99 % of companies can never climb. And, you know, our focus is we're going to build a really kind of strong culture that really unites us to go out and accomplish that. So, look, for me, those kind of four pillars, getting the infrastructure right, you know, building the systems that we use, getting the team in place, and then ultimately getting really focused on how do we build a real culture here.

13:41
have been kind of the primary drivers of that journey. mean, certainly, you know, there's been M &A and there's been, you know, kind of strategies throughout that. But like, as I think about like those four pillars are really the ones that have gotten us to where we are today. Given,  see, given my years in executive search, culture is a general topic that comes up. In my opinion, it's usually used by recruiters in order to make things sound mythical and uh complicated when truly they don't understand themselves, really what that means. Now,

14:10
We talk about cultures and again, believe that the most unique businesses have the most unique cultures and that's what drives their growth and that's what creates their USP. How would you describe, so just with the culture aspects, if I ask you how to describe it, I'll get a load of words that we all use. What is something, and we've just spoken of one aspect for your business. What is something within the Advantage Services group that from a cultural aspect is, hey, we do this and that is a

14:39
example  of our culture. Yeah. So,  and I'll answer that question. Like what thing that we say, like I do a monthly orientation, anybody who's new to the company, like I'm leading it. I'm going to walk through the culture deck. And what I say to the team is I'm going to, you know, I am going to go through what our beliefs are. And like my goal is for you to walk out of this meeting saying, wow,  I am not aligned and I don't want anything to do with this company or for you to say, I love it.

15:08
Right? Like I want to be a part of this. Like when I don't want you to do is say,  well, that was okay. Like I can get behind that. So like we're trying to have kind of a provocative, like this is really what we believe in. It's not for everyone. So,  you know, I'll just give you an example of one. Like one, one of the biggest kind of cultural beliefs that ASG is urgency. Right? So, you know, and we believe like we serve customers in their time of need. If we don't get there first, somebody else will.

15:32
Like for me, like from a customer standpoint, one of the biggest drivers of what a customer is looking for in a home services context is how quickly can he get here? Right? I, you know, I use the example. It's like, look, you're, you know, your AC goes out, you know, the day before your in-laws are coming over, like you're not, it's not about brand loyalty at that point. It's who can get out here and fix this. Right? So we talk about it a lot of like, we are in the urgency business. Like it can't wait until tomorrow. It needs to get done today. And the reality is like, look, you know, what's 110 degrees out that drives a lot of.

16:02
can put a lot of stress on the team, but my view is that's our job.  it's not only doesn't just live in sort of technician context, it lives in a management context, right? So we operate with urgency, we  speed matters. Like we're not gonna take three months to go out and make a decision. Like my view is we're gonna make it in three days.  And our view is like,  we're operate with urgency across the board. And like, that's not for everyone, but there is no world where you could come and work at ASG and say,

16:30
Well, David, I don't agree with that, but I think I'll do fine here. It's like  the culture will just kind of,  you'll just be rejected by the culture and you'll hate it too. ah So that's one example. uh We have seven core beliefs that we really feel strongly about and I could give you example after example of how it even applies in our business. But my goal is for it to be like, I want you to have to choose  on your first day.  Is this kind of business I want to be a part of or not? And my view is it's okay, either way.

17:00
Certainly we want great people to want to come work for us, but we're very deliberate about the kind of company we're trying to build. Making an effort out of myself. think that's something probably I could work on with absolute clarity. We do a lot in the interview process, but I'm a big believer that the interview process continues even when they've been hired. So looking at your world is typically one of the big constraints is acquisitions and that's both...

17:28
generating these potential deals, but also the integration. Integration is one of the things that I feel is done poorly. And the feedback I get from most portfolio companies, private equity firms is that integration has just not been done  or um has been done poorly. Both products. What has been the kind of biggest challenge for you on that integration  of  acquisitions and how have you overcome it? Yeah. So  one is I think integration is very hard.

17:56
So it's that dynamic. It's like even for me, like I couldn't comprehend, you know, doing an acquisition at least at the scale, like every week or something. Meaning, because as we think about an acquisition, we spend a lot of time on the integration. Like our goal, as I mentioned, we don't want to be a collection of different brands. We're not the, hey, you know, keep running your business the way it's been, you know, send us a financial statement at the end of the month. Like we are very focused on how do we get this business and integrate it into what we're doing?

18:26
and ultimately learn from what they're doing to figure out what we can bring back to our platform. So, you know, look, for me,  integration is all about people, right? I think we talk a lot about like, what are the assets of a home services business? It's actually quite simple. You have your reputation and then you have your people, your team, right? And the reality is your reputation is driven by your team. So for me, it's all about like, how do I get this team? This is gonna be disruptive.

18:55
This is gonna be emotional. How do I get this team to go from,  to make the transition alongside with me? And what I, you know, the reality is what the,  in doing M &A, especially when you're talking about owners or you're talking about the existing team, it's emotional. Like it's certainly an owner. You take an owner who's run an owned a business for 30 plus years or something, and it's a part of their life. It's a part of their kid's life. Like a lot of time, family members are in the business. Like it is emotional.

19:23
And even owners who've, you know, are ready to retire or, you know, this is really what they want. It's hard. And you've got to come at it with a lot of sort of empathy of like, how am I proving to the ownership of like, Hey, look, I am gonna, I'm going to do right by you and I'm going to do right by your team and I'm do right by your customers. that's like step one, but then two, it's the team. Like I'm, I've been in a lot of these meetings on the first day and a lot of times people don't want to communicate it with their team prior to closing, but

19:50
I've been in a lot of those meetings where people are looking at you like, oh my God, what's gonna happen? And I don't trust you. And my view is, my view is it's just time for us to go to work. Like we spend a lot of time on the ground, building trust, earning the right to be there, just getting to know people. I mean, I heard recently, it's like people, for the most part, people hate companies, but they like people, right? So in some ways people are intimidated by the idea, hey, this big company, it's is coming in.

20:19
But once you sort of get a chance to really meet the team and start to build those relationships,  the air kind of comes out of the balloon a bit. ah look, I think a lot of people just get wrong is that they just don't spend enough time on the people side. They're so focused on either integration or what the P &L is gonna look like in 60 days, where in reality, it's like we've spent the first 30 plus days only focused on the team. Like how are we?

20:46
ingraining with this team and getting everybody. Look, met, you know, I used to say, nothing's going to change. That's, that's just not true. It's like things are going to change. Businesses are always changing, but we're trying to get that team to understand the next phase of this business. Well, well, likely different from the previous phase, but there's going to be opportunity for you. It's going to be good for you, for your career. And look, we're, you know, there's people in my view, it's, up to that team to make the choice. Are you interested in being a part of what we're doing?

21:13
or not. And my view is if the answer is no, I'm okay with it. Meaning it doesn't have to be some hostile thing. But ultimately we're trying to get that team engaged in what we're doing. And it's hard. It's hard, candidly. Like we've, we've made a lot of mistakes, right? Like there's no, there's no world where we've done all this perfectly, but you know, we spend a lot of time at it, candidly. you think a lot of that, if I kind of summarize what it is, is a very complex problem and has a lot of complexities obviously to it. Do you think that you guys are just spending more

21:42
time on that communication piece, on that understanding piece, on that nurturing piece, more time with your feet on the floor, stood next to the person who's concerned about their role and their position and the change.  And is that what's winning you the war in the most part? Yeah, I think it  is, in my opinion, it's investing the time. So there's no substitute. Like you  have to put the time on the ground with the team.  So

22:10
Like to me, like that's the differentiator. So like in some ways we talk about communication. could put a, you know, I could give a great, you know, hour long presentation to the team on the first day and you know, pass out and have a pizza party or something. But in reality, like you're not winning anybody over in the first hour long meeting. It just takes time. And in some ways too, what I always say to the team is like, you,  I don't expect you to believe anything I say in the first hour of this meeting,  but I intend to prove it to you.

22:39
Right, meaning I am gonna do, I'm gonna do what I say I'm gonna do. So if I say we're gonna do X, Y, Z, it's gonna get done. And my view is,  I am now, we always talk about, I am earning the right to be a part of your team, right? So certainly you go do an acquisition, they're joining our team, but we also think of it, and this is not just me, this is senior leaders, this is everybody. We are earning the right to be a part of your team.  And look, it's hard, it's hard.

23:07
But my view is you've got to spend the time on the ground. like it doesn't happen in a week. It typically doesn't happen in a month. It takes real time to get the team excited about what that next phase is going to look like. And the truth is when it works, it's great. It's great. We've done a lot of deals where, hey, look, we had a really positive experience under previous ownership. We love this business. And now, you know, we were very nervous about you taking over and yes, it's different, but now I see.

23:35
a different trajectory for my career. And yes, it's different, but I'm excited about what the next phase could be. And like that to me is what winning looks like in those contexts. Absolutely. What do you read, watch, listen to that you recommend that others check out, please, David? Yeah. So  I'm a voracious reader uh and podcast listener too. I think in some ways you can replace a lot of the reading you do with podcasts these days. So ah for podcasts, I was like, I love the Founders Podcast.

24:05
I think it's great. kind of, in some ways he's going to go through books, you know, and have to read them. think that's super interesting. But I love to read. I mean, one, uh you know, a book that has been kind of a big theme for us over the last six months is a book called  Working Backwards. So it's about, it's from the uh two senior guys who worked over Jeff Bezos and really the building of  Amazon. And it's a super interesting book. We actually got a chance to see one of the authors speak more recently.

24:32
It's a super interesting book about how Amazon was really built by a set of kind of leadership principles, right? Which we would kind of describe as like, these are their cultural beliefs. And then really how those leadership principles drove their management system. So you hear a lot about things like the two pizza meeting or, know,  meaning Amazon doesn't use PowerPoints and things like that. These narrative concepts. And just the way that that business, how strongly,

25:01
those cultural beliefs, those leadership principles were built into that business. Like in my opinion, now look, I don't know a thing.  I very, there's a lot more people know a lot more about Amazon than me, but like in my opinion, a lot of people think Amazon and they think, oh, they wrote the tech, they wrote the internet wave,  delivery, Amazon web services, et cetera. But like in my view, the reason Amazon's such a great company is because they spent so much time on those leadership principles and they built the systems to support them. And like it's, in some ways I don't think we're,  I know.

25:30
I'm very unlikely we're ever going to be a business the scale of Amazon, but in some ways just see like they spent the time to really build out the infrastructure of that business. And then ultimately that allowed them to make the decisions, the strategic decisions, and then go execute and build the business they built today. So I make everyone on my team read it. I think it's a super interesting book and something I would always recommend to anybody. Satup. I have not heard of that one. So that's been written down, working backwards.

26:00
I'll be all over that. I've had recommended the founders podcast, but I haven't checked it out. So I'll definitely do so  myself. If anybody wishes to reach out to you, David, how best do they do so please? Yeah. So I'm  on LinkedIn. So feel free to look me up, but my email address, davidw at co heating.com.  you know, happy to,  you know, I'd be happy to chat with anyone who's interested in the industry, outside the industry, thinking about, you know, doing something more entrepreneurial love to kind of.

26:28
uh You know, share, swap stories and so anybody wants to chat, be happy to do it. Well, thank you very much for spending your time and coming on the podcast, Awesome, Alex. Appreciate you having me on. It's been fun. Thank you for all of our listeners for yet again tuning in. Till the next time, keep smashing it.