How to Run a Profitable Home Service Business: Lessons from a 100-Year-Old Trade Company

Many owners of plumbing, electrical, roofing, and HVAC companies share a common, frustrating experience: they work incredibly hard, yet the bank account doesn’t reflect their effort. You might have a team on the road and phones ringing, but at the end of the quarter, you are still left wondering where the profit went.

If you want to know how to run a profitable home service business, the secret isn’t just working longer hours or buying more trucks. The secret lies in moving away from guesswork and leaning into proven, repeatable operational systems.

Joe Zimmerman, from Summers and Zim’s near Philadelphia, recently sat down to share how his nearly 100-year-old plumbing, heating, and air conditioning company broke through their revenue ceiling. Despite their deep history and hard work, they hit a point where they lacked consistency. By shifting their strategy, they unlocked an impressive 20% annual growth rate.

Here is the exact blueprint based on their success that demonstrates how to run a profitable home service business without reinventing the wheel.

1. Stop Trying to Solve Everything on Your Own

As a contractor, it is easy to fall into the trap of the “doer” mentality. You assume that because you are an expert in plumbing, electrical, roofing, or HVAC, you should be able to figure out the business side through sheer willpower.

“I don’t know if there was anything that we couldn’t solve on our own,” Zimmerman says, “but I am confident that we couldn’t solve it all on our own.”

When figuring out how to run a profitable home service business, the fastest path to success is leverage. Instead of spending years executing expensive trial-and-error marketing and operational experiments, smart business owners look for turnkey systems that are already built, tested, and optimized for the trades.

2. Eliminate the Lack of Consistency

“We were trying hard, but we really lacked consistency,” Zimmerman notes.

A lack of consistency is a massive silent killer of profitability. If your revenue fluctuates wildly from month to month, or if your technicians are running service calls differently every time they step into a home, your margins are slipping through the cracks.

Learning how to run a profitable home service business requires a shift from accidental success to predictable operations. When Summers and Zim’s aligned with CertainPath, they adopted a model that standardizes the customer experience.

Interestingly, Zimmerman admits they initially resisted: “We thought we had a better way to do something than CertainPath model, and almost invariably, we found out we should have just done it their way right in the beginning.”

3. Dial In Your Trade-Specific Financial Models

You cannot master how to run a profitable home service business if you do not know what your numbers mean. Many trade business owners look at total revenue at the end of the month, but total revenue can hide dangerous inefficiencies.

Zimmerman points out that the biggest turning point for their company was mastering their financial models. Before optimizing their operations, they faced three major blind spots that plague many home service contractors:

• Payroll Percentages: “We never knew what percent of our revenue should be payroll,” Zimmerman explains. If your labor burden is too high, it eats your bottom line; if it’s too low, you are understaffed and burning out your team.

• Average Ticket Benchmarks: “We didn’t know what a good average ticket was and a bad average ticket,” he adds. Maximizing profitability requires understanding what a healthy, sustainable ticket looks like for your specific market.

• Departmental Gross Margins: “We didn’t know what the gross margins for each department should be.” Whether you run a single-trade shop or balance plumbing, electrical, and HVAC, every division must hit specific margin targets to carry its weight.

Once you know exactly what your gross margins and payroll allocations should be, you can make confident, data-driven decisions rather than managing by gut feeling.

4. Focus on the Work You Do Best

When business owners are struggling to figure out how to run a profitable home service business, they often make the mistake of chasing every single lead, taking on low-margin commercial work or off-brand odd jobs just to keep the trucks moving.

True profitability happens when you focus on high-margin, repeatable residential services. For Summers and Zim’s, that meant dialing in their residential maintenance and replacement business.

“I knew we were doing things right because our revenue was consistent, meaning our residential business was growing and we were obviously becoming more profitable because we were doing the work that we were really good at,” Zimmerman shared.

Today, that focus has translated into thousands of loyal customers, including maintaining 7,000 to 8,000 furnaces and air conditioners for annual tune-ups.

The Sky is the Limit for Your Business

If your business looks the same today as it did a year ago, it is time to reassess your operational model. Implementing structured financial models and plug-and-play systems might feel like slow going at first, but it lays the foundation for exponential, highly organized growth.

Understanding how to run a profitable home service business changes the entire trajectory of your company. As Zimmerman concludes about their own journey: “Today, the business looks completely different… We’re growing at about 20% a year. It’s a lot of work to grow that quickly, but with the team we have now, the sky’s the limit.”

Stop trying to reinvent the wheel alone. Look at your numbers, embrace consistent operational systems, and build the profitable trade business you deserve.

Want to see the full interview with Joe Zimmerman and learn more about implementing these systems in your plumbing, HVAC, electrical, or roofing business? Watch the video above to find out how CertainPath helps contractors take control of their profitability.