Home Services Success Stories

From Construction To Customer-Centric Care

• Peakzi • Season 1 • Episode 1

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What if a construction crew with muddy boots transformed into one of Colorado’s most trusted home services brands? That’s the WireNut story Trent Urban shares—how urgency became a blueprint for growth, and how a people-first operating system turned skilled trades into a beloved local service.

We walk through the early pivot from time-and-materials to upfront pricing and COD, the training that helps techs price confidently at the kitchen table, and the choice to design every detail around a customer’s lived experience. A woman-centric lens shaped clean uniforms, protected floors, tidy workspaces, and checklists that prevent callbacks. Trent opens up about the core values—care, family, grow—and why “care” must be mutual: leaders support people, and people protect standards. That clarity sustains hard calls, like parting with high performers who harm culture, so the rest of the team can thrive.

Growth isn’t just sales; it’s systems. We dig into WireNut’s streamlined inventory model, community giving that spotlights local charities on live TV, and the steady cadence of training, coaching, and financial discipline that avoids boom-bust cycles. Data now amplifies judgment. With Peakzi, Trent tracks market share, competitor moves, and real customer sentiment across reviews and social. Think of it as a living SWOT that replaces guesswork with action: tune pricing to value, tighten response times, and focus campaigns where demand is rising.

Looking ahead, Trent makes a bold case for the trades. AI won’t replace technicians who build trust face-to-face, solve problems in attics and crawlspaces, and communicate safety and value with clarity. Private equity may reshape the landscape, but operators with real culture, transparent data, and simple, high standards will win the long game. If you lead a home services company—or want to understand what great service really looks like—you’ll leave with a practical playbook: keep it human, keep it clean, keep learning.

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Peakzi Podcast: Home Services Success Stories

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Home Services Success Stories podcast, powered by Peaksy, the number one AI platform for growing your home services business. On the show today, we have Trent Urban, who is the president at WireNut Home Services. Trent, welcome to the show. How are you? Good. Very good.

SPEAKER_00:

How are you?

SPEAKER_01:

Doing really good. It's great to have you on. Um if you're Yeah, thanks for having me. Absolutely, absolutely excited to dig in and learn more about your story. So start us off with just kind of a brief intro about who you are and what you do, Trent.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh so I'm the owner and president of WireNet Home Services. We're based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, of course. Um we offer, you know, to homeowners, nothing commercial, any of that. We're a strictly service and repair company. Uh we offer electrical, heating, plumbing, and drain services within the homes.

SPEAKER_01:

Electrical, heating, and drain services within the home.

SPEAKER_00:

And I uh heating and cooling that goes to hand in hand, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. Well, it's always cool to learn about the genesis stories of how business come into existence. So tell us a bit about the founding story of Wire Nut. What was the original vision for the business?

SPEAKER_00:

I was actually birthed out of necessity. Um, at the time that the idea started stewing, uh, I was working within my dad's construction company and we were doing heavy industry work. And in between jobs, when we would have a contractor or somebody throw us off on schedule, we would have dead time in between. So we would accept service calls. So we would go into, say, someone's home or small business or whatever, take care of some uh at the time it was just electrical, so electrical repairs. Problem was we weren't geared for that, we didn't respect the location, we didn't have training for that, none of this. We were construction workers running around, probably with mud on our boots, going into their places. So uh, on top of that, the invoicing and just all the process of that was severely broken. We were again a construction company trying something. Uh, so this would be from 2001 we were looking, and then you fast forward a few years. We looked at franchise stuff, all this different stuff. You fast forward a few years, 2004 hits and uh my dad and I, and then my brother, who was a uh financial advisor, he hated what he did, so he wanted to join the family. So we had this uh flyer or whatever for this thing called I think they called it Profit Days back then, also. And it was for this group called Electrician Success International, so ESI. It was uh part of later like clockwork home services, Airtime 500, plumbing success group, all that. And uh we went out to Vegas to see what they had and what they had to say and so forth, and we figured, well, at least we'll have some fun, but you know, it's no good. Um we ended up though signing up for that group at that time, and the major reason was one of the kind of the godfathers of the electrical industry, uh Patrick Kennedy. When we saw him talk and we chatted with him when he was not on stage, things like that, it was like this guy's authentic. So that allowed us to build a model for a service company, which we ended up separating the two companies, uh, built and building a model with that support. And so there was a lot of conversations early on with all the small all the new members because we were in the like group of the beginning ones, and so nobody necessarily knew what they were doing except for Patrick Kennedy. And so he was the one that we would learn from, and we'd go visit his shop, and then we'd visit each other, we'd do trainings, all that. And uh to this day we're still in that group, it's now known as Certain Path, but it's one of those where we're still getting value out of it, we're able to give to others throughout it, you know, because we've been doing it a while and have grown into a more robust company. And uh if you go back to the Great Recession, 08-09, 2010 is when we shut down that construction company, so there is no more of that. It was Urban Electric, my last name. Uh so now we just have WireNet. And then there's a lot more there, but I don't know if I uh if that's relevant to the story, but basically just the ownership splits. Uh, my brother used to be involved in it, was a partner. I bought him out at the end of 2012, um, added HVAC uh in 2013, added plumbing in I think it was 17 or 18. Um, and so we became an actual home services company. We're still carrying around the word wire in our name, wire nut, but that's us.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting. So it really started from a market need. You're originally a construction company that you mentioned. You began to service that need, develop the competency, found like it sounds like you found a leader in the space and kind of model the best practices and kind of grew it organically. And eventually uh the services business overtook the construction business and you shut that down, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotcha, gotcha.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and essentially I switched sides because we needed to shed uh costs on the construction company. And at the time, my brother was running as the GM of the uh small you know wire net that we had just started, and uh so I went and joined him. So we partnered up. So it was out of necessity. I didn't want to do it. I'm glad it happened, but I didn't want to do it at the time.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting, interesting. So, what were those early days like? Didn't really know the business or have the competency or whatnot, but you know, saw the path and started growing it. So, what did that look like?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh we knew the electrical industry, we didn't know home services, customer service, all of that. Totally different pricing model, one where we give a price up front instead of surprising the customer at the tail end. You know, time and material is exactly how that is. You go and you complete the job, and then they don't know what they're gonna pay until you give them the invoice. And in a lot of those cases, even those companies can't give an invoice because they don't know the full costs of the job yet. So then you're mailing an invoice to somebody that you essentially extended credit to someone you don't even know. And so now we're COD, now we give prices up front. Now I've got a team of technicians all in the field that have our price structure. They know how to price jobs. So it's much more in tune with customer service and it's a much more uh like streamlined operation.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting. Okay. So um so so kind of the the pricing structure and the way you did that was kind of a point of differentiation, a jump to the way I guess customers would rather buy versus the latter or the the opposite, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, yep, absolutely. We also um gearing it towards customers, we built everything off of a woman-centric kind of experience because if it's clean, organized, and trustworthy, you know, from a woman's perspective, then it'll pass the colors of uh, you know, a test of men as well. Because uh otherwise we didn't want to be that gruff, greasy, stinky automotive shop that you may remember from the 80s and early 90s, or probably even still now. And uh so we had to try to make sure we were customer-centric, not that you know, dirty experience.

SPEAKER_01:

That's actually a really interesting point right there. So, what was kind of the experience or the insight that led you to really focus in on kind of creating a customer-centric experience around the women, you said?

SPEAKER_00:

In all reality, we're just a DNA made up of the DNA. Uh we're a company made up of the DNA of all kinds of these other companies that I know. And so we take the best and we learn. And in that learning, that's what got us there to customer-centric, protecting the floors, protecting the spaces, um, not having mistakes, having check lists that you know, hey, the job is it truly done, or are we about to create a leak on somebody's floor and uh tear up their hardwoods with it because we because that th those are real risks that you have when you're in someone's home. Um along the way though of adopting that idea, that business model, um one of the things that dawned on me is that a home, probably in your case too, maybe Julian, but a home is typically somebody's number one investment. It's also at the same time, so it's their most valuable thing in their life. At the same time, it's the place where you get recharged. And so if we're gonna go into that space, we sure better. Otherwise we're selfish jerks, we sure better make it about them. It's not about us. And so I mean, I remember 20 years ago I had a dish uh installer, you know, back when we'd put dishes on our houses. Uh had one go open in the attic, did all their work. The only thing to this day that I still quote out and that I remember are the smudge marks on my attic access that he never bothered cleaning off. That's what we're not supposed to be.

SPEAKER_01:

Got it. So basically, going at the business and treating it about what it is that you know, which is usually, you know, family's most prized asset, and really treating the customer that way. So I think that's great. So, fast forward to present day, WireNut has for sure become one of the most recognized names in home services in Colorado. So, what would you say has been kind of the secret to that growth and longevity?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, I would pretty much probably chalk it up to playing the long game. Building a business isn't easy, it's not an overnight endeavor. And so, in the time that I've spent doing this and from the beginnings of learning from others, and I still do the same. Uh, you just we have to stay refined, we have to stay cutting edge, and we have to make it about the people. As a friend of mine who has another very successful company says, it's we are people serving the people, and that's really what it is. We're not Google bots crawling websites, we're not AI mechanisms going out and learning about society. We are people going into other people's homes serving them, and we have to, again, like I said, make it about them. So uh, in that long game strategy, there's so many various things that that go on in a company, and you could be excellent at one. Like I know some people that they were friends that have had companies, some of them have closed them down, but they were really good at training on sales. But that's all they weren't good with the financial side, they weren't good with making sure you have sticky customers that you know you repeats that you can count on that they can count on you. Um, there's an awful high failure rate in the industry, and a lot of it comes from that. They're doing the short game, trying to do a money grab, get out, whatever they can do because they think that's their career. And instead, if you stick with it and go into the deeper layers of how we operate, you you got to be involved with culture because again, it's people. Um, we, for example, just rolled out a uh inventory model um two months ago that is the simplest, cleanest, streamlined inventory model I have yet to ever hear of. And we rolled that out where a lot of other companies wouldn't have spent the time or effort. And so I think that's been one differentiator. Uh community involvement just uh three hours ago. Yeah, I went on uh local news. I go on every month and we give money to a charity, so we do it on air. We let the viewers pick the charity. Um, and then they get a big check and you know, kind of an excitable uh event where they're getting issued that. They get to talk about their charity, share, you know, who they are, what they stand for, what they do to help others. And so doing stuff like that, it gives us name recognition, yes, because we're on the air, and that's only fair. We're the ones paying for all of this, but we make the entire interview about them. And so the one just this morning was uh Mustang ambassadors, and uh they'll work with special needs kids, adults, veterans who have had traumatic brain injuries, you name it, and they uh work with them on horses, on Mustangs in particular. And so really cool stuff. We end up meeting an awesome charity, new one every month.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's a lot there. So I heard the long game strategy, really making about the customer, innovating pretty much every aspect of the business, an emphasis on culture as well as community service. So there's a lot going on there. So um speak to us just a bit about the culture. How would you describe the culture at Warnet?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, healthy, we treat everybody with dignity, we don't lash out, attack each other, disrespect each other. Those are kind of the mainstays, those are the staples of who we have to be as a culture. We have to have mutual respect and so forth. But if you get into our actual core values, these also layer on, and they are care, family, grow. So you have here's one just actually unpacking a little more detail. We have our three core values. About two, three years ago, the care core value was pretty much seen by every employee. They took it as you have to care about me. We do, but you also have to care about the organization, and there was some of that lax going on, and so we ended up having to re-uh revamp our structure, you know, not entirely, but you know, replace some people. That's one of the harder parts of uh, you know, having a career like this, being in a leadership position. You have to affect people's lives, and it's not always something they're excited about. So to go into that culture though, care has to be a mutual two-way street. That's where we started talking more about accountability. If you want to have that seat, somebody else would probably love to have that seat that's out in the market right now, looking for a good career. You better treat that seat with respect. And I I consider that in my role too. I have to do a great job of this. If I don't, I need to get out of the way. Let somebody else do it. And so um the family part, that's where the dignity, respect, mutual uh communication unpack a thing uh topic that that needs to be unpacked if needed, if that's going to lead you to a healthier place. And then grow uh is that you have to have a growth mindset. So no stagnation, no victimhood, none of that. You can't be a victim here and ever get anywhere. And that's a big problem in our society right now. Everybody's a victim. Just look at the billboards, the attorneys tell you five times over on your usual commute.

SPEAKER_01:

Love that. Grow family and care and really having a growth mindset and taking responsibility and accountability for your actions and your outcomes. Um, I think that's really great. I think people think home services business and they think, you know, oh yeah, they're just you know here to fix a job for for my home. But like there's so much more to it. It's a people structure, it's a people organization. And I think that's part of how you've been able to produce such excellence because you are sort of growing your people and your culture and leading by example that way. I think that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we're doing our part, we're trying. Yep. No, I I think you're right though, Julian. Uh, when I've looked at other industries and so forth, I'm like, oh, it's gotta be probably the same exact thing today that it was 20 years ago. Uh, but ours isn't that, and I don't know if the other ones are. And so that's made me reconsider that. Like maybe I was totally wrong on that. Maybe something that seems simple or mundane is actually dynamic and has a lot of layers to it. Because if it's going to justify manager or managers being there 40-ish or whatever hours a week, there's got to be something you're doing. So, what are you changing? What are you improving? Are you the same thing you are the you know today that you were five years ago? That kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I love that. So you're a customer of Peaksy. So, what kind of impact has Peaksy made on your business?

SPEAKER_00:

Transparency. Um the long game, like I've been talking about. There's an awful, awful lot of private equity going on in our space right now. Um, seems everybody's selling. So one thing is in that the private equity wants to know who you really are as a company, and Peaksy helps unpack that, but I'm not even approaching it from that angle. Um, there is definite value there. Uh, if you actually I talked one time, there was a PeakSe uh session going on at an expo, and the crowd, you know, could get the mic afterwards and I talked about it. Uh, and because I'm a big fan. And one of the things in there was if you're gonna sell your business, you better go into the closet and clean out the closet and do all those kinds of things, right? Just like you would your house. Figure out what those things are that you need to clean up and get them cleaned up if you want maximum value for selling again. Now, where I'm approaching it from is more of the long game of is our customer service top notch? Has it slipped? Is our um value proposition at top notch or has it slipped? Those kinds of things, because if we let any of them slip too far, that's where you get the chaotic, you know, like the roller coaster within businesses. And that's what we've been able to stave off, you know, the best we can with economic cycles, competitor changes, all that. So that I think is where a lot of the failures come from, though. Is a company is ignorant to it, whether they're not looking or they don't care to what they really are. And if you're really this and the consumer is saying you're really that, it doesn't matter what our opinions are, we're wrong. And so what are you really? And that's what Peaksy helps helps identify.

SPEAKER_01:

So what how would you describe to another home services business owner what Peaks actually is and what it does for you?

SPEAKER_00:

What it is would be a tool that I'll call it big data. I don't know if it fits the technical realm of that, but it goes in, pulls big data. Uh it's a key phrase that kind of started popping up a few years ago, right? Um, and it analyzes that and gives the results basically of all those metrics of what the company is. How much market share do you have? Who are your competitors? What are they up to? What are their people doing currently? Um, what are people saying about you? So it's pulling sentiment off of not just reviews but social media posts and responses, and you name it. It's pulling all that, aggregating it together, and giving you that in a in a package that you can understand and digest and then action. So that's what it is. Now, what's it done for me? It's the same thing. It's package that up, give it to me in something I can click on right now and go look at. And now what do I need to do with my company as a result?

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting. So it gives you kind of a view of the marketplace, the industry, and how your business kind of stacks up. So it shows you any kind of gaps that you might be needing to sort of improve upon. It's it like helps you look at like a 360 view of your business, where it fits within the market and what you need to do to continue to improve and serve your customer and grow. So uh interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, look at even uh if you've heard of SWOT analysis, strengths, yeah, yeah. Peaksy gives you that right there.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, awesome. Yeah, that's that's a great yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

The problem with a SWOT analysis is you're like what we've done, we do them at our quarterly offsite sometimes. You're doing it from your own vantage point. What do I think our strengths, what do I think our weaknesses? Well, Peaksy will tell you without your own uh blinders on.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. Okay. So I guess uh, well, I mean, would you recommend Peaksy to other home services business owners?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, of course. I have and I'll continue to. Awesome, awesome. And they just keep making leaps and bounds in new features and value, value for the product anyway.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, absolutely. So, Trent, we're about to to land a plane here. So what do you think is the future of Wirenut? Like, what are you most excited about?

SPEAKER_00:

There's a okay, so overall, I think it's a very positive future. Uh the AI that Peaksy uses really can't be used for replacing our team, our people. It's that's a long ways out. Maybe in one of those sci-fi future robot movies, you know, maybe that can happen. Um but right now we have a strong future. We have a demand for help. We need more people in the industry. Unfortunately, parents all taught their kids to go to Google or Starbucks. I make fun of it that way all the time, but it's true. Um, they should go out and actually work with their hands, learn skills that they can be proud of. Um, in our industry, you've got customer service, hands-on experience, you've got uh sales conversations, like you know, of making sure that you're communicating the value proposition. There's so much that you can learn in this. Um, you can go into management and do all these things and randomness uh, you know, that you have to work on at any given time. So the future is bright. The other thing is private equity would not be buying up people if they didn't feel the same way. And there are some cases where those private equity groups have over-leveraged themselves, gotten in trouble. There's one I can speak of. I don't know about any others. But if that happens and if that happens in a chain reaction, then that's gonna leave the standalone operators in a pretty good position, is my belief. And so are we still gonna be one of those standalone operators at that time? Um, what's our unique, what's our value proposition? How do we get people to come here and consider working here and come here and consider using our services as a customer?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, no, I mean everything that I see, it's interesting how you kind of you know led with AI and tech and stuff like that. But every like chart or graph or projection that I'm hearing all of the AI experts talk about, they say like one industry that is like really poised is is uh is trades, you know, in home services. So I think that's uh that's really awesome. You're like right there at the forefront uh to to capitalize. So um yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

We also we also got past the mom and pop phase. There's still a lot of mom and pops, but you look at if you remember the blockbuster era, blockbuster video comes in, all the mom and pops got displaced. That's what private equity is trying to do in home services. I don't think that they're gonna be as successful, it's a more robust, more complicated industry, but in all of that, we've got better tools like Peaksy, we've got all these different things, we've got better knowledge, we're operating at levels we've never operated at. And so we're past that phase of doing, you know, be like basically buying our career or whatever. Um, we're just an employee making employee wages but owns a company. There's no perks of that. You they're turning into robust actual businesses that have real needs and and real value. So it's it's a bright future for home services.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. That's really great to hear. So, Trent, close us out. Anything else that we should be speaking about regarding a wire nut? Any other message that you have for prospective customers or or maybe even advice for other home services business owners?

SPEAKER_00:

Advice. Um treat your customers, treat your employees as you'd want to be treated. Make it simple. Like we joke around with each other quite a bit. And I've got a um one of my buddies, he came back to our company here. I met him here, he left for a while, came back. Well, anyway, that's a long story to just say. Uh, we were talking about it the other day, and he said, you know, when we're joking around and stuff with each other, I think it's healthy for us to show that to the customers when the time and place is right. And so that's what we do. We try to make it incredibly simple. Just don't overcomplicate this. Don't make it all HR-driven and bureaucratic. I despise those two things. Make it simple, but demand. Here's one thing is never fall for a hostage situation. Demand that your team treats the company with dignity and respect that it deserves. Otherwise, you've got, because anybody's falling for it, well, he's really good at his job, so I'm gonna keep him. Yeah, but he's a total ass. Nobody likes working with him. He's probably run off five or six people. Why is he still here? Those kinds of things have to be addressed. And that on the mom and pop topic, that's one of those infancy kind of problems that I see. I've done it. And then you work past it, and you're like, why did I ever do that? I'm and so just keep it simple. Keep it good people, be surrounded by good people.

SPEAKER_01:

I think that is really great advice and a good place to end the conversation there. So, well, well, Trent, tell us uh, how can people connect with you to learn more about Wire Not? Connect with you personally. Tell us all that information.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, if someone wants to call in, they can call 719-227-0500. That'll get to our call center. They can patch through a call, you know, wherever as needed. Customers is really what that's geared around, though. Uh, if you want to contact me directly via email, you can do that at t urban. So t-u-r-b-a-n at thewire nut.com. And um otherwise, we're in Colorado Springs. We've got many peers that have come and visited us. We've gone to them as well, so we're always open for that too.

SPEAKER_01:

That's great. And we'll make sure to have all your contact information in the show notes. So, Trent, thank you so much for your time and sharing your story here on the show today.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

And everyone else, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Home Services Success Stories powered by Peaksy. And we'll see you on the next episode next time.