🏗️
Start a Business
Licensing, insurance, pricing, business structure, and landing your first customers.
Start, run, and grow your contracting business.
Practical guides, software comparisons, and marketing strategies for contractors who want to build a real business — not just another job.
What we cover
Everything you need, in five tracks
From your first license to your first crew — follow the track that matches where your business is today.
📣
Marketing & Sales
Local SEO, Google Business Profile, reviews, advertising, lead follow-up, and estimating.
🗓️
Operations
Scheduling, job management, crews, invoicing, payments, and profitability.
💻
Software & Technology
Software comparisons, honest reviews, implementation guides, and AI tools for the field.
📈
Growth
Hiring, moving from handyman to contractor, expanding services, and building repeatable processes.
🎯
New here? Start here.
Our step-by-step roadmap takes you from “thinking about it” to licensed, insured, and landing your first paying customers.
Featured guides
Start with these
How to Get Your First 10 Customers (Without Spending on Ads)
The zero-budget playbook for a new contractor's first customers: your network, your neighborhood, fast response, and the review flywheel.
How to Price Contracting Jobs So You Actually Make Money
The markup-and-margin math most contractors get wrong, how to calculate your real hourly cost, and a worked example you can copy.
How to Start a Contracting Business in 2026: The Complete 8-Step Guide
The step-by-step playbook for going from skilled tradesperson to licensed, insured, profitable business owner — in the order things actually need to happen.
Fresh off the jobsite
Latest articles
Referral Partners: Get Plumbers and Realtors Sending You Work
The outreach script, the tracking sheet, and the math showing what one property manager account is worth against $900 a month in paid leads.
Remote Takeoff Apps: Can You Quote a Roof Without Driving There?
Satellite and photo measurement tested against tape-measure numbers on three properties, plus the error math that tells you when to drive out anyway.
Route Planning for Contractors: Add One More Job a Day
How clustering jobs into zones, batching estimates, and a Sunday-night schedule board recovers 7 billable hours a week for a two-truck shop.
Hourly, Piece Rate, or Bonus: Paying a Crew Without Killing Margin
The same $4,800 install run through three crew pay structures, with the exact bonus formula that lands gross margin at 45%.
Maintenance Agreements: Turn One-Off Jobs Into Monthly Revenue
How to build, price, and sell a service plan from scratch — with the labor-hour math, a three-tier example, and what 100 agreements do to slow season.
What Card Processing Really Costs Contractors (and When to Push ACH)
Real effective rates on a $9,000 invoice across Stripe, Square, QuickBooks and field-service apps, plus the honest rules on surcharging versus building fees into your price.
Get one actionable tip every week
Join contractors getting practical advice on winning more jobs, running tighter operations, and picking the right tools — free, no fluff, unsubscribe anytime.