AI & Marketing for Home Service Pros

Mauricio Cardenal

0.0 (0)
Marketing
Updated Weekly

This is AI & Marketing for Home Service Pros — the show for contractors who want to grow without wasting time or money. If you're in roofing, HVAC, plumbing, or any home service business, we break down how AI and modern marketing can help you book more jobs, close more leads, and build a business that runs without babysitting every task

23h ago

You're Either Recommended or Rejected | Best of the AI + Marketing Show

🚀 Ready to grow your home service business with AI and marketing that actually works? Book a free strategy call → https://www.contractormarketingpros.net/calendar For twenty years the job was making the homeowner happy and making Google happy. Marcus Sheridan opens this episode by explaining what changed. When an AI gives a homeowner one answer instead of ten blue links, you are either in that answer or you are not. There is no page two. This is a best of episode pulling the strongest moments from six conversations. Marcus Sheridan, who built River Pools on radical pricing transparency. Steven Van Horn, who with his partner Chad grew a heating and cooling company from $3.5 million to $27 million in five years. Chris Lee, who runs on two funnels and nothing else. Lance Bachmann, who has sold seven companies. Austin Rosenbaum, founder of Demand IQ. And Ed Rollins of Rooftastic, who calls his company a marketing and sales organization that happens to do roofing. In this episode you'll learn: Why Google is becoming what Austin calls an outcome engine, and how its agent may already be calling your office to gather a quote for a homeownerYour phone system is now a ranking factor, because if Google's agent cannot get a clean answer from you, your position dropsMarcus breaks down the three reasons contractors refuse to post pricing and dismantles all three, including the line that your competitors do not pay your billsLance disagrees with him directly, and explains why an estimate that is off by thirty percent hands your salesperson an uphill battleChris Lee's math on why every inbound call is worth $4,000 at a 33% close rate, a $20,000 ticket, and 60% gross marginWhen your cost of acquisition is out of line, only three things can be broken, and Chris names all three78% of homeowners go with the first company they have a full conversation with, not the first company that reaches outSteven's team found their booking rate had slipped to 43%, and the story of how they got it into the mid ninetiesEd keeps his cost per appointment under $300 and explains why cost per lead is the wrong number to watchHow Rooftastic built 1,500 reviews at a 4.9 rating, and why Ed personally calls anyone who leaves a bad oneWhy Steven recruits from restaurants instead of competing for licensed techs, and what happens if you don't invest in people who then stayChris on why your social media is the net rather than the hook when you are recruitingLance on what private equity looks for in diligence, and why they are hunting for reasons to say no This one is for the home service owner who wants to hear six people who have actually built something argue about the things that matter instead of agreeing with each other. Mentioned in this episode: CTA Mauricio's Calendar
Aug 11

Free Facebook Posts, 75 Reps, Sold in 7 Years

🚀 Ready to grow your home service business with AI and marketing that actually works? Book a free strategy call → https://www.contractormarketingpros.net/calendar Todd Price had no marketing budget and no idea how to build one. He was not running SEO, did not know how to post to YouTube, and never bought a lead for years. Facebook was the only thing he understood, so he posted every single day, and then he pushed every salesperson in the company to do the same. At the peak that was 75 reps posting several times a day, all of it free. Seven years after he started, he sold Perimeter Roofing to a private equity backed platform. Todd came up through the gym industry starting at 16, moved into personal training at 17, and competed in bodybuilding for close to twenty years before retiring from the stage at 38. He started his roofing career while that fitness life was still going, running the two alongside each other rather than trading one for the other. His first roofing employer gave him two leads and some magnets for his Jeep and taught him nothing else. He has since resigned from Perimeter, and he is back in the gym industry today while coaching operators across roofing, pest control, water mitigation, and construction. In this episode you'll learn: • How Todd replaced a marketing budget he did not have with free Facebook posting, and how it scaled to 75 reps posting daily • The 25/75 content rule he still teaches, where only a quarter of what you post is about your business • Why posting ten times a day does not burn out your audience, and who the only person is who sees every post • The four-word engagement post that outperformed everything else he tried, and why it made his business posts reach more people • How his partner built a steady referral pipeline off real estate agents after knocking exactly one door in his life • The reverse math that turns a revenue target into a daily number: two claims approved traces back to three adjuster meetings, ten roof inspections, and about 60 doors • How to read your own ratios to find the exact place you are losing deals, whether it is at the door, on the roof, or in the claim • Why Todd deliberately kept majority share instead of splitting evenly with his partners • What most contractors get wrong when they say they have systems and processes, and why claim steps are not systems • Why some private equity owned companies get run into the ground, and what has to survive the transition • The thing almost every coaching client struggles to do, and why you cannot sell a company until you do it This one is for the home service owner who thinks they need a budget before they can grow, and for anyone who wants to build something that runs without them. Where to find Todd: Group and one-on-one coaching at https://officialtoddprice.com Mentioned in this episode: Mauricio's Calendar
Aug 4

Your Booking Rate Isn't 85%. It's 60%.

🚀 Ready to grow your home service business with AI and marketing that actually works? Book a free strategy call → https://www.contractormarketingpros.net/calendar Your Booking Rate Isn't 85%. It's 60%. | Katya Hill, Lace Ask a home service owner what their booking rate is and most will tell you mid to high 80s. When Lace runs the actual analysis on their call history, the real number lands around 60%. That gap is not a lead problem. It's a 40% leak between the phone ringing and the job getting completed, and you're paying for it with marketing dollars you already spent. Katya Hill is Head of Marketing and Partnerships at Lace, an AI platform that analyzes 100% of inbound and outbound calls in a home service call center and shows owners exactly why qualified calls didn't book. Before she joined the company she called Lace customers herself to verify the results. One reported half a million dollars saved in a year. Another recovered forty thousand in a single month. A call center manager told her she had been spending 40 hours a week listening back to calls, and got that time back to actually coach her team. In this episode you'll learn: • Why manual disposition destroys your data, and how a CSR with the next call ringing quietly turns a qualified lead into a "not qualified" entry • The two leaks Katya finds in almost every business she analyzes, and which one costs more • Why the campaign that brought you three leads might be outperforming the campaign that brought you forty • How to track past the booked job to the completed job, since cancellations create a second drop off nobody watches • The dispatch fee objection gets more pushback than anything else, and Katya explains what the CSRs who overcome it are actually saying • Whether you should publish pricing on your website, and the ballpark approach Katya has seen convert best • Same day availability moves conversion more than almost any other lever, and there are ways to work around a full schedule without saying "Friday, take it or leave it" • What a property management client said when he called an owner on a weekend to congratulate him on the great new woman he'd hired at the front desk • Why one company that fired its entire CSR team for AI agents watched its Google reviews drop to one star inside a month • Start with after hours if you're nervous about AI on your phones, because those calls are already going to voicemail and dying • What actually makes a good CSR script, and why the fastest booking is often the worst booking • The exercise Katya says to run this week, in a quiet room, before you take a single software demo This one is for the home service owner who keeps hearing "we need more leads" from the team, and suspects the truth is that the leads they already paid for are getting away. Mentioned in this episode: Mauricio's Calendar
Jul 28

Local Search Split in Two. Are You Only Running Half?

🚀 Ready to grow your home service business with AI and marketing that actually works? Book a free strategy call → https://www.contractormarketingpros.net/calendar Local search did not die. It quietly split into two tracks, and most home service owners are only running one of them. The homeowner ready to call right now still finds you in the map pack. The homeowner still researching is asking ChatGPT and Google's AI who to trust, and they are building a short list before they ever see your name. This is a solo episode. No guest, just Mauricio Cardenal, founder of Contractor Marketing Pros, an agency that has generated more than 250,000 inbound leads and over 150 million dollars in tracked revenue for home service businesses. He breaks down the exact two-track playbook his team runs for HVAC, plumbing, roofing, and electrical clients, and gives you one action you can take this week. In this episode you'll learn: • Why 68 percent of US Google searches now end without a click, according to SparkToro's 2026 analysis of Similarweb data, and what that quietly costs you every week • How the zero click rate jumps to 83 percent the moment an AI overview appears on the page • The reason ranking on Google no longer means getting traffic, and what to chase instead • Why 22 percent of homeowners are already using AI like ChatGPT to find a home service provider, up from a small fraction a year ago, per Scorpion's 2026 report • The two customers you are actually serving, the one ready to book and the one still researching, and why one strategy cannot reach both • What the map pack still rewards in 2026, from a complete Google Business Profile to fresh reviews on a steady schedule • Why a review from yesterday now outweighs a five year old one, and how recency changed local ranking • The keyword stuffing mistake that got a Plano plumber suspended, and what a clean profile like Roto-Rooter does instead • The simple find the question, answer it with a clear heading, add the details format that gets your business quoted by AI • Why 80 percent of home service businesses have no plan for AI search, and why that open window is your advantage right now This one is for the home service owner who relies on Google for leads and suspects the ground has shifted but has not been shown exactly what to do about it. Mentioned in this episode: Mauricio's Calendar Mauricio's Calendar
Jul 21

The Two Funnels Every Home Service Business Has to Master

🚀 Ready to grow your home service business with AI and marketing that actually works? Book a free strategy call → https://www.contractormarketingpros.com/calendar Most contractors believe they have a lead problem. Chris Lee believes they have a numbers problem. He built and exited a nine-figure home service business, and he says the owners who scale are simply the ones who know their cost of acquisition cold and treat recruiting like a second marketing funnel. Chris now runs Next Level Pros, where he coaches home service operators on how to scale past the level where the owner does everything. He has spent around 1.5 million dollars of his own money on coaching and masterminds since 2016, scaled a marketing operation to millions per month, and has the kind of specific, number-driven answers most operators never get. In this episode you'll learn: • Why there are only two funnels that actually matter in your business, lead generation and people generation, and why owners obsess over the first while ignoring the second • The four numbers every owner should know by heart, starting with cost of acquisition, then gross margin, net margin, and break-even • Why your marketing budget should be a percentage of revenue, never a flat dollar amount, with cost of acquisition targeted near 10% of revenue • How to read your KPIs as lagging indicators, so a high acquisition cost points you straight to the lead source, the booking rate, or the close rate • What should happen in the first 30 seconds after a lead comes in, and why a dedicated person to answer and chase leads is your cheapest, highest-return hire • The math that makes one phone call worth 4,000 dollars, and why most owners hand that call to the wrong person • Why a 35% gross margin keeps you stuck and how Chris structures a 60% margin into marketing, sales, fixed cost, and net profit • How to run recruiting like a marketing campaign by selling vision and opportunity instead of salary • Why your social media is not for finding recruits, it is the net that catches them when they come looking for you • How Chris thinks about lead aggregators like Angi, and the simple math that makes them work instead of fail • The custom AI tools he built to make part of his portfolio essentially software free, plus the recorder he wears 8 to 10 hours a day to turn conversations into SOPs This one is for the home service owner who is tired of buying their way to growth and wants to understand the actual machine underneath it. Mentioned in this episode: Mauricio's calendar Mauricio's Calendar
Jul 14

Train The Person First, Then Train the AI

🚀 Ready to grow your home service business with AI and marketing that actually works? Book a free strategy call → https://www.contractormarketingpros.com/calendar Most owners blame the lead source when a call goes nowhere. Joe Crisara has trained more than seventy three thousand service professionals, and he says the lead is rarely the problem. The person running the call was never trained, and most owners do not know how to train in the first place. Worse, they try to bolt AI on top of a sales process that was broken to begin with. Joe is known as America's Service Sales Coach. He spent roughly forty five years in the trades, was on the original team that built the AI coaching tool Rilla, and created his own AI pricing tool that helps technicians sell three to five times more on the same call. He is the author of the bestseller "What Should We Do?" In this episode you'll learn: • Why you train the person first and only then train the AI on what worked, instead of expecting software to fix a sales process nobody documented • How to make someone actually want the training before you give it, using what Joe calls the law of dissonance • Why AI is an exoskeleton for your sales coach, not a replacement, and what happens to accountability when a machine is the only thing giving feedback • The reason AI gives your people too much credit, and why a human still has to deliver the improvement plan • How Joe's option builder breaks one problem into five, prices it out of a two thousand line price book in seconds, and reveals the price last on purpose • Why the same customer journey works no matter where the lead came from, so you can stop blaming Facebook, Angi, or Yelp • The ninety minutes per call most technicians waste on notes and pricing, and what to do with that time instead • The real KPI Joe says marketers ignore, which is whether you know the names of the people actually running your calls This one is for any home service owner who keeps buying more leads when the real fix is upstream, in how their people are trained. Mentioned in this episode: Mauricio's Calendar Mauricio's Calendar
Jul 7

From a Week of Estimating to One Day With AI

🚀 Ready to grow your home service business with AI and marketing that actually works? Book a free strategy call → https://www.contractormarketingpros.com/calendar Most contractors turn down bids they do not have time to put together. Brad Strawbridge used to do the same thing. Then he built a system that produces a full commercial sealed bid package in a day instead of the seven to ten days his old estimating team needed, and now he bids work he used to politely decline. Brad founded Capital City Roofing in May 2024 and scaled it to a multimillion-dollar operation in about a year. He co-founded BuilderLync, an AI-driven contractor CRM, sits on the board of the Roofing Technology Think Tank, and was just accepted into the Forbes Business Council. On this show he does not talk in generalities. He shares his actual screen and builds a real bid live while an RFP sits in his inbox. In this episode you'll learn: • Why the first step is feeding the AI your own pricing data, your labor, your equipment, your dumpsters and lifts, so the bids come out accurate to how you actually do business instead of guessing off market averages • How Brad turned a repeatable estimating process into a reusable skill, a detailed instruction file the AI follows the same way every single time • The reason he tested a bid against a baseline until it scored 13 out of 13 before he ever saved it as a skill, and why an untested version only scored 7 out of 13 • How giving the AI permission to challenge him paid off when it overrode his pricing decision to protect his margin • Why he organizes his AI workspace like a company, with a project for each department, so the AI always pulls the right context • The moment the system caught that a set of plans was a permit set, not a sealed-bid RFP, and warned it would otherwise create compliance documents that do not exist • How speed to proposal became his single biggest competitive edge in commercial work • Why a brand new sales rep with zero roofing background can run appointments on day one when the scripts and objection handling are built into the system This one is for any home service contractor who is leaving money on the table because there are not enough hours in the day to quote every opportunity. Mentioned in this episode: Mauricio's Calendar Mauricio's Calendar
Jun 30

You Don't Need More Leads: The 5 Funnel Leaks Costing Contractors Jobs

🚀 Ready to grow your home service business with AI and marketing that actually works? Book a free strategy call → https://www.contractormarketingpros.com/calendar Most contractors react to a slow month the same way. Spend more on ads, buy more leads, knock more doors. But if your funnel leaks, more leads just means spending more money to lose more jobs. The contractors pulling away from your market aren't buying more leads. They fixed five specific leaks first. In this solo episode, Mauricio Cardenal opens up the exact funnel audit his agency runs on every client. Mauricio is the founder of Contractor Marketing Pros, where he has worked with more than 500 contractors over nine years and generated $150M+ in tracked sales. This material comes straight from a private workshop he ran for 30 contractors, and the feedback was strong enough that he turned it into a full episode. In this episode you'll learn: • Why 78% of customers buy from the first company that responds, and why your odds of reaching a lead drop 60% after just one hour • The three baseline numbers you must know before spending a dollar on marketing: average job value, gross margin, and allowable cost per acquisition • How one company recovered $750,000 in 60 days with a missed-call text campaign, and another generated $250,000 in week one just by calling back abandoned calls • Real contact rate takes 12 to 14 touches over a two to three week window, not two calls and a shrug • Why texting like a human converts dramatically better, and the iMessage trick that lifts response rates by roughly 50% • The industry average call booking rate is 42% according to ServiceTitan, while elite operators book 90% • A $5M company that moves booking rate from 60% to 70% adds roughly $500,000 in revenue without changing anything else • How Steven Van Horn's team at Simpson Salute added $4M in tracked revenue through consistent CSR training alone • Brigham Dickinson's three caller needs that get appointments booked: feel understood, feel cared about, feel reassured • The night-before selfie video from your tech that separates you from every competitor and lifts show rates • How Brad Strawbridge used AI to win a $200,000 commercial contract with a proposal delivered in hours instead of the 7 days his competitors needed • The same 100 leads producing 6 jobs for one contractor and 12 for another, and exactly which two stages made the difference This one is for the contractor who is tired of paying for leads that never turn into revenue and wants to know exactly where the money is leaking out. Mentioned in this episode: Mauricio's Calendar Mauricio's Calendar

This is AI & Marketing for Home Service Pros — the show for contractors who want to grow without wasting time or money. If you're in roofing, HVAC, plumbing, or any home service business, we break down how AI and modern marketing can help you book more jobs, close more leads, and build a business that runs without babysitting every task

Creator

Mauricio Cardenal
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

55
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Copyright 2026 Mauricio Cardenal
Show Website

AI & Marketing for Home Service Pros

Management

Management

Updated Weekly
Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Updated Semiweekly