The Best Home Service Businesses to Build a $10M Company

The Best Boring Businesses to Build a $10M Company

Not every "boring business" is built to scale.

In this episode of Jackquisitions, Jack Carr ranks four home service businesses that can realistically grow into $10M+ companies and explains why so many others stall out long before they get there. From recurring revenue and route density to hiring, middle management, and acquisitions, Jack breaks down what separates a lifestyle business from a business with real enterprise value.

If you're thinking about buying, starting, or scaling a home service company, this episode will help you understand which business models have the strongest long-term potential, and where each one tends to break.

The best businesses aren't just easy to start. They're built to scale.

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In this episode, Jack covers:

• The five characteristics every scalable home service business shares
 • Why plumbing ranks ahead of HVAC for long-term growth
 • How recurring revenue changes the value of a business
 • The biggest scaling challenges in pest control and landscaping
 • Why most companies get stuck around the $2M mark
 • What buyers look for in businesses that can grow past $10M
 • How leadership, systems, and middle management drive enterprise value

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Follow Jack for More Acquisition Insights

X: https://x.com/thehvacjack

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Sponsors

Breaking $5M Workshop

Join John Wilson and Jack Carr in Akron, OH for a hands-on workshop built for home service owners ready to scale past $5M. Get the proven playbook, tour Wilson's operation, and connect with other growth-minded contractors.

Register here: https://www.ownedandoperated.com/upcoming-events/oao-workshop-breaking-5-million


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Transcript

Hustle vs Real Company

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most boring business videos you see on YouTube are really just side hustle videos. Here are four boring businesses that'll actually scale past $10 million. Start a pressure washing business, start a junk removal business, buy a mower. That's all fine if the goal is like a lifestyle living business where you're going to be doing the job. But I'm interested in a different question. Which boring business is actually going to become a real company? A real company that is going to provide a lifestyle for me and a bunch of team members, not 300k a year with the owner doing everything. There's nothing wrong with that. I repeat, there's nothing wrong with your lifestyle business if that's what you want. But I'm talking about businesses that can scale past $10 million in revenue with managers, crews, systems, acquisitions, and eventually a real exit that'll bring you generational wealth because those two things are not the same. A business can be easy to start, but it can be terrible to scale. So I'm gonna rank four boring businesses that can realistically grow past 10 million. And I'm gonna tell you where they break because that's the part that most people leave out. I own some of these businesses, spoiler alert. So I know what this is. My name's Jack. I've owned seven businesses now startups, acquisitions with exits on the back end. And currently I'm helping build a $50 million plus revenue HVAC plumbing and electrical company here in Nashville, Tennessee. So let's get into it.

What Actually Scales

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Two, the customers buy repeatedly. And three, the work can be done by trained employees, not unicorn technicians that are 87 years old in a dying trade. Four, you can run multiple crews, trucks, or routes. And five, the systems repeat from market to market so that you can scale into different markets. And that's the difference between a hustle and a company. Because what usually breaks in most of these companies at scale is also predictable. Those are the difference between hustles and a company. What usually breaks at scale is also predictable. The owner does all the selling. One technician holds all the customer relationships and they leave. Every job is custom. There's no recurring revenue whatsoever, or there's no middle management. And that's why a business can go from 2 million and stay at 2 million for years and years and years. The owner becomes the bottleneck. These decisions become

4 Pest Control

SPEAKER_01 2:32

the bottleneck. So starting at number four, pest control. Pest control is a boring business, but it has recurring revenue. The US pest control market alone is roughly $30 billion. There's plenty of room to build a $10 million company. And the reason it scales is simple. Most customers don't want you to spray one time. The idea that the customers have, the education of the customer is they know that doesn't work. They want the bugs gone and they want them to stay gone. So pest control businesses they sell weekly, quarterly, bi-monthly, annual plans. They build root density. You train technicians, you expand into mosquitoes and termite and rodents and crawl space and commercials account. That's how a real pest control, local pest control company becomes a real platform. The acquisition market also proves this point. Pest controls have seen roll-up activity for years because the customers are so sticky and the revenue is recurring. But where does it break? Hiring and quality control. A bad technician can ruin an entire route. And lazy technicians skip steps, and poorly trained technicians have callbacks and refunds and bad reviews. And then the other issue is licensing. Licensing is a double-edged sword, it creates a moat, but it also means that growth depends on having the right qualified people in place. I love pest control. I like it a lot. If you can keep the churn low, you can build routes tightly, it scales.

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SPEAKER_01 3:52

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SPEAKER_00 3:58

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SPEAKER_01 4:12

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3 Landscaping

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Number three, landscaping. I know landscaping gets dismissed because people think hey, it's just a guy with a mower. But landscaping maintenance can absolutely scale, especially commercial landscaping. Brightview, which is a giant corporation, did $2.67 billion in 2025. That's a billion with a B. That's a $2.67 billion landscaping company. And it proves that there's a ceiling there. The scalable version is not rat random residential installs, it's reoccurring maintenance contracts, which are the foundation of the business, followed by large replacements. And by replacements, I mean hey, we're redoing the this whole area, we're redoing the gardens and the shrubs, and we have mulch coming in. And it's through contracts with HOAs and apartment complexes and office parks and retail centers and schools and municipal properties and hospitals. Somebody has to do all of that. Why not you? Uh, you build crews, you build routes, you schedule weekly services, then you layer in enhancements, irrigation, mulch, snow removal, tree work, seasonal color changes, and that's how landscaping gets big. The reason I don't have it at number one or two is because of market size and labor availability. You can build a bigger company in landscaping than most people think, but but it does break, and it breaks at that labor size. It's because the business looks simple enough. You have 60 people, 25 trucks, rain delays, equipment breakdowns, and the crew needs to be productive every single day because equipment utilization matters here. Route density, again, we've talked about it twice. Route density matters, and then crew leadership matters. A commercial contract can be extremely competitive. If you underbid work just to grow revenue, you can build a $10 million headache which you're paying to go work on. I like landscaping when it's maintenance heavy, contract driven. I don't like it when it's every job is mowing lawns or lots of custom build design hardscape.

2 HVAC to 1 Plumbing

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Number two. Number two is I know I said boring business, and I still consider it a boring business, but it's it's gotten sexier over the years. I feel good about that. Uh it's HVAC. I'm the HVAC jack. I love HVAC. HVAC is the obvious answer, and it belongs near the top of this list because HVAC contractor market is around $159 billion. It's just massive, it's an absolutely massive industry, and the model has the right, like the the standard model has the right multiple income streams. You have maintenance, you do maintenance, yeah. That turns into service calls. Sometimes service calls turn into maintenance contracts, and then all of that turns eventually into replacements and installs. Then you have nice to have like indoor air quality, ductwork. A good HVAC company doesn't re rely on just one of those. They utilize the entire base of that. But HVAC does also break, right? HVAC has a lot of sales management, right? You're in a bunch of people's homes, you have to talk to customers, you have to know when to sell, know when to not, you have to know when to offer, no one to not, and that sales management is also on the technician side with technical recruiting. You have to make sure that the technicians are up to date on the newest technology in the field and that they understand what's out there to be able to work on customers' units because there's you know 20 different brands of units versus when you're mowing lawns, there's one type of lawn, it's grass, you cut the grass. Um, HVAC, you can have a Lennox, you can have a carrier, you can have a train, and all of them are gonna have somewhat different systems. At a small size, one great owner and sales manager can drive the whole business, but at scale like that doesn't work. You need a call center that's disciplined, you need dispatch crews, you need training install or excuse me, technician training, you need high levels of install quality, you need sales process and maintenance conversion, and you need a real minute middle management layer. And number one, although I love HVAC, and I'm sad to say this plumbing has taken the number one spot. My number one's plumbing at a US plumbing contractor market, the plumbing contractor market is around, I think when I last looked, 191 billion. So more than HVAC, and it makes sense. When your sewer line backs up in your house, the water heater dies, or there's water dripping through your ceiling, the customer has to buy. They're not thinking about buying, they're just buying. They're not waiting six months to make that purchase, they're just buying. It also has the same thing that HVAC does, it has maintenance, service, and it has high-ticket opportunities, water heaters, sewer rely, sewer lining, sewer replacement, repipes, excavation, drain cleaning. And unlike HVAC, plumbing is less tied to one singular equipment cycle. It has all of those large equipment demands or large high-ticket items that's not really it's not on any kind of cycle. Again, much like pest control, every single house has plumbing. Not every single house necessarily has HVAC, most do most modern ones do nowadays, but every single house has plumbing. Every single house has eventually has a plumbing need. It happens. And yes, a lot of plumbing can be DIY, but there's a lot of plumbing that just can't be DIY unless you have your own excavator and can dig up your own sewer and have the license to do so. Like again, it's not DIYs, it's a beautiful business. Um, the reason it breaks is because it's extremely complex. It sounds like hey, simple. You have a water problem at somebody's house or sewer problem, you come out, you fix it, you get paid. But really, like there's a whole secondary layer of dispatching matters, pricing matters, call booking matters, quality control matters. One bad excavation can wipe out all the profit on a job because you didn't have a rock closet and this thing's under tons and tons and tons of rocks, or one bad plumber can destroy your reviews. One weak service manager can knock out all your great service techs. Um, or not knock them out, but like they go somewhere else. Um, so like to get past 10 million, plumbing needs like leadership layers. It's not just plumbers, it's service managers and install managers and dispatch and call center. And you need some kind of warehouse function and and some kind of recruiting and HR function, and then you need to be training the team. Businesses that do not scale are owner-centric. You only have so much time in the day, you only have so much energy and so much resources. If I were building today, again, I'm an owner of these companies, but I would definitely start again with plumbing. I would start again with HVAC, and then I would think about pest control. Not because they're easy, they're not. I'm telling you right now, I own these businesses, they're not easy. I own an HVAC and plumbing company, it's not easy, but because there's a proven path, there's a playbook, there's tons of different playbooks that are almost similar to how to break 10 million and there's acquisition targets everywhere, and the buyers already understand the exit story. You have liquidity at the end if you want it. Most boring businesses can make you a living. I'm not saying that whatsoever. Um, they can make you a really good living, but very few can become real companies that have multiple layers of management and can push past 10 million. Focus on the businesses that get stronger as they grow, that you have the efficiencies of scale, not the ones that get more difficult every time you add another truck. If you like what you heard, like, sub, share, post a comment. Is there a better business that can each reach 10 million faster than the one I had today? Let me know. Let me know about it. I'm interested. Um, until next time. Peace.