Epic Entrepreneurs

A single busted HVAC, one questionable pay stub, and one owner who cannot fund a roof replacement can turn “passive income” into a full-time job fast. We sit down with Eli Miller and Jeff Mayorga of Encompass Property Management to show what really happens behind the scenes of professional property management and why treating a rental home like a business changes everything.

Eli shares how the 2008 market crash p...

Radon is one of those problems that feels easy to postpone because you cannot see it, smell it, or feel it and that is exactly why homeowners get caught off guard. We sit down with Alex Micco from Alpha Radon to translate the risk into plain English, including his simple line that makes it click: radon is like microdoses of radiation. From there we get practical fast, because the goal is not fear, it is action you can take today. <...

Your home can look perfectly fine on the outside while an overlooked electrical panel quietly becomes a safety risk. We sit down with Matthew Wright of NS Electric, a residential electrician serving Morgantown and the surrounding area, to talk about the problems most homeowners do not notice until the lights go out or something starts to smell hot. He shares why “it still works” is not a safety strategy, how proactive e...

TikTok is not just dances and trends, it is quietly becoming one of the strongest lead sources in local services, including construction. We talk with Dylan Mason of Mason Contracting, a North Carolina general contractor focused on custom homes, about how his business grows from word of mouth roots into a modern custom home builder brand that homeowners can actually find, trust, and follow.

Dylan walks us through the real st...

Starting a service business sounds like freedom until you’re staring at the ceiling at 2am replaying a job plan, a customer complaint, or a quote you’re not sure will hold. We talk with Noah Nasekos from Covenant Plumbing LLC about the unfiltered reality of building a plumbing company from the ground up and why the “after hours” work is often the hardest part of entrepreneurship.

Noah shares the mome...

A layoff can wreck your confidence or rewrite your future, and Jeff Riley chose the second path. Jeff joins us from the Carolina Results Team to share how he went from an HR career and a sudden company bankruptcy to becoming a high-producing real estate agent, then building a property management operation that now serves hundreds of doors across the Columbia and Central South Carolina market.

We talk about what people don&rs...

Most companies say they care about wellbeing, then act surprised when burnout shows up as turnover, low morale, and stalled productivity. I sit down with Leonora Cherry, founder of Zen and Zest Wellness Solutions in Chesapeake, Virginia, to talk about what workplace wellness looks like when it’s built for real people and real budgets, not just a poster in the break room.

We get specific about the engagement problem th...

The fastest way to lose business in home services is painfully boring: don’t answer the phone, show up late, and make customers chase you. We talk with Joshua Pugliese, owner of Grato Property Care in the Irwin and North Huntingdon area near Pittsburgh, about how doing the basics with pride can outperform louder competitors and create real, scalable business growth.

Joshua shares why he named the company “Grato&r...

“Did it pass?” might be the most common home inspection question and it’s also the wrong one. We sit down with Matt Ruggieri, an Army veteran and owner of Pillar To Post Home Inspections in the Pittsburgh area, to explain what a home inspection is truly for: turning a stressful, emotional purchase into a clear decision backed by evidence, photos, and plain-English context. We share how great inspectors deliver rep...

The part of entrepreneurship nobody posts about is the part that breaks you: the scheduling, the estimates, the follow-ups, the hiring, the payroll, and the constant fear that the pipeline dries up. I’m joined by Daniel Creft from R7 Painting Service to talk about scaling a home service business when you started as the person doing the work. If you’ve ever felt like you “own a job” instead of owning a compan...

Most people hear “chimney sweep” and picture a simple job. The reality is a high-skill, high-trust trade where one mistake can put a family at risk and where the owner is also the marketer, scheduler, bookkeeper, and technician. We’re joined by Matthew Anstine, founder of Spazzacamino, who shares what it takes to run a safety-first chimney sweep business while building a reputation from scratch in a new area. He e...

If you have ever thought owning a business means total freedom, this conversation will challenge that fast. We talk with Sean McNamara of Sol Terra Construction LLC, a United States Marine Corps veteran, architecture graduate, and Chattanooga general contractor, about what entrepreneurship actually feels like when the work is real, physical, and client-driven. Sean lays out the unfiltered truth: you can quit one boss and end up wit...

Quality is easy to say and hard to scale, especially when you’re growing fast and every clean carries your name. We sit down with Raya Zompero of Zompero Pro Cleaning & Beyond to talk about what it takes to build a residential and commercial cleaning business in the Charleston, West Virginia area that clients trust even when she’s not on-site. Her story is part grit, part standards, and part learning to build struct...

Contractor horror stories usually start long before the demo day. Jamie from Capstone Construction and Remodeling joins us from northern Arizona to break down what actually builds homeowner trust, what red flags should stop you in your tracks, and how the smallest “forgotten” details can turn a clean estimate into thousands in surprise costs. We talk about the mindset shift from selling a project to interviewing for the...

People love to watch dirt move, but the real skill in excavation is everything you don’t see: the research, the permits, the materials, the measurements, and the decisions that prevent a “quick fix” from turning into a costly redo. We sit down with Luke Palmer from Palmer Excavation to unpack how drainage problems, grading, land clearing, and demolition-related site work actually get planned and delivered when the...

He signed a commercial lease with $100 to his name and called it a plan. That mindset carried Brandon Joynt through one of the harshest reality checks an owner can face: COVID shutting down his movie theaters and draining over $50K in liquidity in weeks, forcing a pivot that reshaped everything.

We talk with Brandon about Joynt Industries and Nice and Clean Floor Care and Restoration, including how commercial carpet cleaning...

Walking away from “good money” is easy to praise and hard to do, especially when you have a stay-at-home spouse and four kids depending on you. We sit down with Chris Cannon from Cannon Power Washing to unpack the real story behind choosing a local service business over life on the road climbing cell phone towers, and why going all in forced him to grow up fast as an owner, a provider, and a leader. 

We get ...

Owning a roofing business can look “easy” right up until the phone starts ringing at night, a crew needs an answer on a jobsite, and a customer wants perfection on a messy tear-off. We’re joined by Reed Brown of Roof Rangers, a residential and commercial roofing contractor serving Greenville, the Upstate of South Carolina, and beyond, for an honest look at what it takes to build a company when the work is nonstop ...

You can tell a lot about a business by what they obsess over, and Caitlin and Daniel Burcham obsess over the basics most people mess up: showing up on time, treating customers with respect, and doing plumbing work the right way the first time. We talk with the owners of Burcham’s Plumbing about how a family-owned plumbing company grows in the real world, from residential service calls to commercial projects, gas lines, drains...