How We Got Here

If on New Year’s Day this year (2026) you had told me I was going to build a blue collar business, I would have laughed in your face. If you had told me that same business would sell for $3m at the 4.5 month mark, I would have walked away shaking my head. That’s madness.

Well, eventually madness comes for all of us. On February 11th I sent out an email titled “Will you come on my podcast?” and got about 150 responses from all kinds of interesting people with fascinating backgrounds and businesses. One of those people was Jeff Price, a guy in Houston (a founder just like us) who had started a concrete leveling “drop services” business.

Jeff came on the brand new podcast and we had a really interesting conversation about how he was compelled to buy a blue collar business and after lots of research he found himself drawn to concrete leveling. Anyway long story short: he ended up just starting one from zero instead of buying one. He figured if he could SELL services to customers, he could sub-contract out the work to “Real” concrete leveling businesses. Thus, “Drop Services” was the game.

I have a problem.

People who know me (or read this newsletter) know that I have a serious problem where I get interested in EVERYTHING. I have a hard time NOT spinning up a new business when I’m intrigued by a new idea. Call it ADHD, Shiny Object Syndrome, or whatever you want. It’s my curse. To illustrate how bad it is, here’s a timeline:

• February 11 — Jeff tells me he’s doing concrete leveling “Drop services”

• February 12 — We have a phone call to talk about the business and the podcast. Jeff gives me his blessing to try it out in Austin, TX.

• February 16 — Hill Country Slabs is born

• February 21 — We get our first paying customer ($1,350 in revenue — $550 in profit)

• February 25 — Jeff and I record the podcast.

“Wow, it looks like this is going to be a real business. But wait, what about Stanly?”

What about Stanly?

At the same time as the timeline above, my co-founder Ron and I were running our SaaS startup called Stanly which had lots of paying customers using our tool to generate more revenue for their eCommerce stores. Stanly, by all accounts, looked like it was going to be a good, successful business. There was one MAJOR flaw though: Stanly didn’t feel FUTURE PROOF.

I’ve been spending the last 4-ish years talking about how we should all be finding our version of “Future proof”. This essentially means: able to withstand the next 10 years of radical innovation in AI and Automation.

What will your business/job look like if in 2028 we can all trust AI to build anything “correctly”?

In my head, it doesn’t sound like alarmism or doomsday prepper language. It’s more like “Diversify your investments”. If you’re building a SaaS business, what happens if most of your current and potential customers decide they finally have the tools build it fully themselves? Would you be okay?

Even huge companies like Salesforce and HubSpot are seeing a customer exodus toward single-user DIY CRMs.

I know it’s not fun to think about, but you might as well have SOME kind of plan in place. I decided when we got our first paying customer in the “Concrete business” that Stanly didn’t pass the “Can my customers easily build this themselves?” test, and Ron and I agreed to pour everything into the concrete company and shut Stanly down.

Laying the Groundwork

Ron and I knew that if we were going to do concrete (which we didn’t find particularly interesting), it couldn’t be JUST about making money selling concrete services. There had to be a bigger more audacious goal. It wasn’t until we had our second or third customer that we figured out what that goal was:

"Let's get good at this, then teach people how to build a trades business that replaces their tech career income."

Decent goal, right? Noble? Good enough for us!

From that point on, every advertisement we created, every sales call I did, every quote visit had an underlying goal: “Let’s prove this works and remember how we did it so that we can teach people”.

Much more fun than “I need this money.”

It took us 60 days to cross our net profit goal of $200k (annualized). It was, by all accounts, WORKING.

We had officially hit our goal of replacing a “decent software engineer’s income”

We jumped into something we knew NOTHING about, and found that what we lacked in concrete knowledge, we made up for with other skills. Our competition doesn't know how to advertise. Clear communication is an afterthought. Nobody respects the customer's schedule. Obvious generalizations, sure, but anyone who's dealt with a contractor is nodding right now.

Years of building startups had quietly trained us for this without us realizing it. We knew how to run ads that didn't feel like ads, write copy that actually got read, and follow up with a lead until they said yes or no. We knew how to build systems instead of relying on hustle. None of that is unique or impressive in tech, it's just rare in trades, so it looked like MAGIC.

A Buyer Came Along

About 4 months in, I got connected (through a friend) to Sir Dylan Peters (No, he doesn’t call himself “Sir”, but he was, in fact, recently knighted) who is the founder and GP at a PE firm called Reawaken Capital.

They own a few hundred rental homes and were looking to start rolling up home services businesses to vertically integrate servicing their properties and keep profits in the portfolio. Sweet idea!

So, after a very brief period of negotiation and an incredibly fast turnaround on the diligence and paperwork:

• July 6 — Hill Country Slabs is Acquired — 18 weeks after its inception

Just like that: Three million dollars in the bank

Well, not exactly. It’s a financed deal that will pay us $3m in monthly payments over several years, but the effect is the same. We proved what we wanted to prove, and now have the confidence that we can teach anyone how to start their own trades business from zero and build it to a place where they feel their income is FUTURE PROOF.

💡 Business Idea of the Week

Here is a list of interesting “Trades” businesses:

• Bat exclusion

• Dryer vent cleaning

• Permanent holiday lighting

• Sports court resurfacing

• Cold plunge installation

• Artificial turf pet yards

• Glass restoration

• Chimney relining

• Pool leak detection

• Wildlife exclusion

• Deck and dock restoration

• Concrete grinding and polishing

• Historic masonry restoration

• Industrial floor coatings

• Shade sail installation

Every single one of these businesses COULD be started for almost no capital and grown to $1m in annual profit within 12 months.

Let me teach you how

Starting today, I’ll be gathering interest in participating in the next thing. It’s not a course, it’s a community. If you’ve read what I’ve written about Hampton over the years, you know that I LOVE a good community. Imagine a Hampton, an EO, or a YPO that is solely focused on helping each other build a successful trades business to future proof our (and diversify) our incomes

I’m building the world’s first online community for new & experienced entrepreneurs who want to “Diversify their future income” by starting a trades business from zero.

Imagine:

• Daily/Weekly sessions with me and some amazing business coaches continuing to help you find the right path for your business in your area.

• Open sharing of what is working in terms of:

  • Customer acquisition strategies

  • Automation practices

  • Systems design

  • Increasing profitability

• Referral sharing (Pressure washing company recommends a concrete company or arborist — Pool guy refers a deck sealer, and so on)

• All the knowledge and guidance you could ever need to build a successful trades business in the US.

Is this interesting to you? Sign up!

Click to fill out the form below. I will not bother you with a new newsletter or email drip. I won’t even reach out until I’m ready to invite you to the community.

🔗 TAKE 60 SECONDS AND FILL OUT THE FORM HERE

THE END

That’s it for now. I have a community to build. Feels good to finally get the word out. Hopefully someone will care 🤞 

I love you,

P.S.— HUGE thank you to Dylan and the entire Reawaken Capital team. You guys are truly professional operators and it shows in everything you do. You’re going to make a lot of people rich.