Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast

#246 From $700K to $30 Million With Multiple Locations!

Sep 30, 2025

Rich Jordan, founder and operator, shares his journey of scaling a trades business from $700K to over $30M in just five years. He discusses the challenges of multi-location integration, revealing how they changed strategies on call center centralization. Rich highlights the importance of leadership development and cultural alignment post-acquisition, emphasizing rapid feedback and frontline engagement. He also shares insights on recruiting leaders from the trades and military, as well as the balance between speed and risk in operations.

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ANECDOTE

Early Acquisition Pain

Rich bought a $3M business in a different state expecting immediate scale and learned running two-state operations was five times harder.
They centralized services too early, failed, then decentralized before later re-centralizing with better infrastructure.

ADVICE

Don't Centralize Too Soon

Avoid centralizing critical functions before your team and systems can handle the scale.
Decentralize to stabilize, then re-centralize once you have robust processes and training.

ANECDOTE

High‑Touch Integration Style

Rich describes a hands-on integration style where he personally answered phones and rode in trucks during early acquisitions.
That “bear hug” approach drove fast change but demands heavy personal time and presence.

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In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with his good friend and fellow operator, Rich Jordan, to unpack how he scaled from $700K to over $30M in just five years — across three branches and two states.

Rich shares the unfiltered lessons from going multi-location, from the chaos of centralizing call centers too early, to re-decentralizing and finally recentralizing with the right infrastructure. He and John dive into the cultural challenges of acquisitions, how to win buy-in with frontline techs, why leadership development is the true bottleneck, and how “force of will” integrations differ from slow-play rollouts.

Rich also reveals how his team pushed margins up 10 points in just 60 days, why he cut a top producer to save culture, and what it takes to prepare for a Greenfield launch while still buying and integrating new branches.

Together, they unpack:

The jump from $700K → $30M in five years through multi-location growth
Centralize vs. decentralize — when to share services and when to split
Driving culture post-acquisition with rapid feedback loops and frontline wins
Leadership pipelines from the trades and the military
Integration style: high-touch, high-speed, “bear hug” takeovers
Preparing for Greenfielding — recruiting, training, and marketing from scratch

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John Wilson

🎙️ Guest
Rich Jordan

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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC

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