Welcome to the Freedom Blueprint Podcast! Host Justin Deese delivers practical advice from his decades in the home service industry. Each week, discover strategies for success, avoid pitfalls, and hear real-life stories. Join our community to learn and grow together. Featuring guests like Tommy Mello from Home Service Experts, Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch from Service Business Mastery, Jerod Williams from Wealthy Plumbers and Ara Mahdessian CEO of Service Titan. Visit www.FreedomBlueprintPodcast.com for more. Empowering leaders, fostering growth and a positive mindset. Your journey to success in plumbing, HVAC, and electrical starts here!
Pitch Analysis
Required Pod Score for this show. PitchCentric checks your profile against host openness, topical fit, and audience signals before you generate a pitch.
Contact path
Verified email
Booking probability
35%
Guest openness
Selective
Verified email on file
80/100
Required Score
Sign up to generate a grounded pitch for Freedom Blueprint for Home Services | HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Leadership, Business Growth.
What is Freedom Blueprint for Home Services | HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Leadership, Business Growth?
Freedom Blueprint for Home Services | HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Leadership, Business Growth is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 176 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.
About the host
Unknown Host hosts Freedom Blueprint for Home Services | HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Leadership, Business Growth, a business show with 176 episodes published.
Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.
Episode #176
176 | Would You Work for You? The Question Every Owner Avoids
Sep 28, 20268 min
You're sitting across from another owner at a conference, or your spouse at the kitchen table, saying the thing every owner says: "I can't find good people. Nobody wants to work anymore." Now flip it — if you were Jimmy, clocking in every morning under a boss exactly like you, would you stay? In this Freedom Fuel episode, Justin turns the mirror all the way around. He admits there was a stretch where he blamed his team for having no fire, until he actually watched himself — walking in stressed and letting the shop feel it, only talking to his guys when something was wrong, expecting loyalty he hadn't done anything to earn. He didn't have a team problem. He had a me problem. Justin breaks down the difference between compliance and commitment, why your team is really just a mirror reflecting the energy you bring them, and the one bold move — asking your team what it's actually like to work for you — that changes everything once you're willing to sit with the answer. ⏱️ VIDEO CHAPTERS 0:00 — The Question Every Owner Avoids: Would You Work for You? 1:40 — Welcome to the Freedom Blueprint Podcast 1:58 — Turning the Mirror Around: Grading the Boss, Not the Team 2:28 — My Confession: I Had a Me Problem, Not a Team Problem 3:10 — Why Good Techs Get to Choose Who They Work For 3:30 — Compliance vs. Commitment: The Whole Ballgame 3:51 — Your Team Is a Mirror 4:00 — A Morning in the Life: How the Stress Lands on Jimmy 4:27 — Why a Conversation With You Means "I'm in Trouble" 4:40 — Why This Never Feels Like Bad Leadership From the Inside 4:59 — What to Actually Do: Ask the Question and Mean It 5:11 — Start With the Energy You Walk In With 5:26 — Catch Them Doing It Right, Out Loud 5:33 — The Bold Move: Ask Your Team What It's Like to Work for You 5:56 — What Changes When You Become Someone Worth Working For 6:30 — Same Guys, Different Leader 6:35 — Your Challenge for Today 7:07 — Share, Subscribe, and Leave a Review IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN ✅ The uncomfortable question at the center of the episode: would you actually work for you? ✅ Why compliance and commitment are two completely different things, and which one you're actually getting ✅ How your own morning stress quietly becomes your team's daily experience of you ✅ The bold move of asking your team what it's really like to work for you, and how to actually hear the answer ✅ The one-thing-this-week challenge to start closing the gap Average leaders blame the hiring pool. Great leaders check the mirror first. If you've ever said nobody wants to work anymore, this episode is for you. Welcome to The Freedom Blueprint Podcast — short, powerful episodes to help home service business owners lead better, grow faster, and keep crushing it. Subscribe so you don't miss the next Freedom Fuel episode Share this with an owner who's still blaming the hiring pool instead of the mirror #HomeServiceBusiness #HVACBusiness #PlumbingBusiness #ContractorMarketing #FreedomBlueprint #JustinDeese #LeadershipDevelopment #TeamCulture #ContractorTips #BusinessGrowth
175 | Ellen Rohr: Brand, Basics, and What Ride-Alongs Really Teach You
Sep 25, 202636 min
Justin sits down with Ellen Rohr on the beach right after Home Service Hoorah wraps — Zoom Drain founder, Service Titan brand ambassador lead, and someone who's been humbled by this industry more times than she can count. Ellen walks through her path from founding Zoom Drain to running Service Titan's brand ambassador program, how she discovered Jered Williams (the Wealthy Plumber) on Instagram, and why his Wahoo Plumbing launch, booked solid for weeks off a handful of Facebook ads, is proof that personal brand matters more than ever in an age of rising ad costs and AI-generated noise. From there the conversation turns to the basics: the John Wooden "how you put on your socks" lesson on repetition and training, why SOPs should start with something as simple as "sober, on time, dressed right," and a string of shop-tour stories — from A+ Garage's high-tension springs to Any Hour's maze-like $125 million strip mall to the shop visit that changed how Ellen thought about scale back in 1992. She closes with details on Service Titan's free Titan Creator Summit on November 19th. ⏱️ VIDEO CHAPTERS 0:00 — Hanging Out With Ellen After She Rocked the Hoorah Stage 0:22 — Why We Kept This Year's Event Intimate 1:05 — Ellen's First-Ever Podcast 1:57 — How Wealthy Plumber and Hoorah Joined Forces 2:48 — Ellen's Path From Zoom Drain to Service Titan 3:53 — Building Service Titan's Brand Ambassador Program 5:04 — Discovering Jered Williams on Instagram 5:27 — Practicing What You Preach: The Wahoo Plumbing Ad Story 6:02 — Why Personal Brand Matters More Than Ever 7:18 — Guerrilla Marketing for the Small Guys 7:59 — Chad Peterman's $200M BHAG 8:37 — The 18–24 Month Rebuild After Selling a Business 9:31 — Jered's Take: Why Getting Bigger Reduces Risk 11:12 — John Wooden, Socks, and the Power of Repetition 11:58 — SOPs Start With Sober, On Time, Dressed Right 13:19 — Most of Your Time Is Spent Correcting What You Never Clarified 14:01 — Shop Tours: The Garage Door Ride-Along 15:16 — A+ Garage and a New Respect for Dangerous Equipment 16:12 — The Advantage of Not Knowing the Trade 17:25 — What Am I Doing That's Getting in Your Way? 18:08 — What Really Matters on a Ride-Along 19:27 — Simple Process, Overcomplicated by Owners 20:46 — The Titan Creator Summit, November 19th 22:38 — Half the Room Was at Their First-Ever Conference 23:02 — The $100 Million Shop Tour That Changed Ellen's Mind 24:38 — Tommy Mello's Business Is a Training Business 25:09 — Any Hour: The $125 Million Strip Mall 27:16 — Training Rooms Built Like Real Garages 28:33 — Patrick Lang and the Art of the Long Q&A 29:29 — Texting Kristen From the Panel 30:16 — John Fay's Next Chapter 31:08 — See You Next Year at Hoorah IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN ✅ Why Ellen believes personal brand matters more than ever in the age of AI and rising ad costs ✅ The John Wooden "how you put on your socks" lesson and what it means for training your team ✅ Why simple SOPs, starting with "sober, on time, dressed right," beat over-engineered systems ✅ Stories from shop tours at A+ Garage, Any Hour, and Mike Diamond's landmark 1992 shop visit ✅ Details on Service Titan's free Titan Creator Summit on November 19th This one's less of a lesson and more of a conversation — two people who've built and sold businesses swapping stories about training, brand, and the mistakes that taught them the most. If you want the behind-the-scenes of Home Service Hoorah straight from one of its guests, this episode is for you. Welcome to The Freedom Blueprint Podcast — short, powerful episodes to help home service business owners lead better, grow faster, and keep crushing it. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode Share this with an owner building their brand from the ground up #HomeServiceBusiness #HVACBusiness #PlumbingBusiness #ContractorMarketing #FreedomBlueprint #JustinDeese #EllenRohr #ZoomDrain #ServiceTitan #HomeServiceHoorah
174 | Customers Silently Leave: What Your 4.8 Stars Aren't Telling You
Sep 21, 20269 min
It's the first of the month, and your reviews look great — 4.8 stars, fifty-something reviews, only two bad ones you can still name off the top of your head. So you lean back and think, we're doing all right. Then you pull the year-end numbers: a thousand calls, fifty reviews. Where did the other 950 people go? In this Freedom Fuel episode, Justin admits he spent years using his review page as a mirror — if it looked good, he felt good — while never once asking about the customers who said nothing at all. He was reading the highlight reel and calling it the whole game film. Silence isn't approval. Silence is the sound of somebody leaving, and it's costing more than most owners realize. Justin prices it out: at $400 a ticket and a five-year customer relationship, even a small slice of your silent customers walking away adds up to real six-figure money, money you then have to pay twice to replace. He lays out three simple ways to close the gap — one question every technician should ask before leaving a job, an old-school phone call to customers who've gone quiet, and training your team to notice when something feels off before it turns into a lost customer. ⏱️ VIDEO CHAPTERS 0:00 — The Reviews Look Great. The Math Doesn't. 0:30 — Where Are the Other 950 People? 0:41 — Today's Topic: The Customers You Never Hear Complain 1:42 — Welcome to the Freedom Blueprint Podcast 2:15 — Why "No News" Isn't Good News 2:50 — Reading the Highlight Reel Instead of the Game Film 3:08 — Pricing Out One Lost Customer 3:31 — The $380,000 Hiding in Your Silent 950 3:45 — Paying to Acquire the Same Customer Twice 3:55 — Why We Only Measure What's Loud 4:13 — The Assumption: "If We Were Bad, They'd Tell Us" 4:40 — The Real Reason Nobody Goes Looking 4:50 — Fixing the Silence Starts at the Door 5:00 — The One Question Every Tech Should Ask 5:20 — Finding the Customers Who Already Left 5:36 — The Old-School Phone Call That Wins Them Back 5:56 — Teaching Jimmy to Read the Room 6:17 — What You Get When You Stop Guessing 6:45 — Back to My Confession 7:00 — The Challenge: Call 10 Silent Customers This Week 7:20 — Your One Assignment for Today 7:34 — Share, Subscribe, and Leave a Review IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN ✅ Why "no complaints" doesn't mean "no problem" — and what silence actually costs you ✅ The simple math that turns your quiet, unhappy customers into a real dollar figure ✅ The one question every technician should ask before driving off the job ✅ How to reopen the door with customers who quietly walked away, the old-school way ✅ How to train your team to "read the room" and catch a problem before it becomes a lost customer Average owners read their review page and call it the whole story. Great owners go looking for the 950 people who never said a word. If your reviews look great but your growth doesn't match, this episode is for you. Welcome to The Freedom Blueprint Podcast — short, powerful episodes to help home service business owners lead better, grow faster, and keep crushing it. Subscribe so you don't miss the next Freedom Fuel episode Share this with an owner who thinks 4.8 stars means everything's fine #HomeServiceBusiness #HVACBusiness #PlumbingBusiness #ContractorMarketing #FreedomBlueprint #JustinDeese #CustomerExperience #CustomerRetention #ContractorTips #BusinessGrowth
173 | Inside Home Service Hoorah: The Hiring System That's Booking Trucks in Days
Sep 18, 202617 min
Recorded live from the beach right after the second annual Home Service Hoorah wrapped, Justin and Kristen break down the biggest takeaways from two days built around one thing: hiring. They walk through the "open house" recruiting process they've run for years across markets big and small, then dig into the Facebook and Indeed retargeting trick that got one brand-new plumbing company booked out for two weeks in just three or four days — and pulled 70 people into an office built for a fraction of that. From there, the conversation turns to the growing presence of women on stage and in the trades, and closes with a story from the Blue Angels' ground CEO about why the team hires for attitude and teamwork over raw skill — and what that means for how you build your own crew. ⏱️ VIDEO CHAPTERS 0:00 — Recording Live From the Beach After Home Service Hoorah 0:30 — Two Days, One Deep Dive: The "Open House" Recruiting Process 1:27 — Going Deep Instead of Wide: Why This Year Hit Different 1:56 — Jared's Walkthrough: Building an Ad in Meta 3:04 — The Retargeting Trick Nobody Talks About 3:52 — 70 People Showed Up to a Brand-New Company's Open House 4:39 — Why This Fixes the "Employees Holding You Hostage" Problem 4:47 — Big Takeaway: More Women on Stage This Year 6:05 — Is the Industry Changing, or Just Getting Louder? 6:34 — Half the Room Had Never Been to an Event Like This 7:14 — Pensacola Beach: The Hidden Gem Behind the Event 8:01 — The Real Cost of Showing Up 9:13 — Guest Speakers: Steve Wilmer Brings the Energy 10:12 — The Ground CEO of the Blue Angels 11:14 — Inside the Diamond Formation: 18 Inches at 800 MPH 11:54 — Why the Blue Angels Hire for Attitude, Not Skill 12:41 — Best Teammates, Not Just Best Pilots 13:32 — Wrapping Up: HomeServiceHoorah.com IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN ✅ The "open house" recruiting process that's filled trucks for years, in markets big and small ✅ The Facebook + Indeed retargeting trick that booked one plumbing company solid in days ✅ Why systems like this only work when you stop treating them as "set it and forget it" ✅ What the Blue Angels' ground crew can teach you about hiring for attitude over skill ✅ Why going deep on fewer topics beat going wide this year, and what attendees left able to implement immediately Average events send you home with a stack of ideas you'll never open again. Great events send you home with one thing you can implement on the flight back. If hiring is your biggest headache, this recap is for you. Welcome to The Freedom Blueprint Podcast — short, powerful episodes to help home service business owners lead better, grow faster, and keep crushing it. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode Share this with an owner who's tired of the hiring grind #HomeServiceBusiness #HVACBusiness #PlumbingBusiness #ContractorMarketing #FreedomBlueprint #JustinDeese #Recruiting #Hiring #HomeServiceHoorah #Leadership
172 | Tugboat vs. Lighthouse: Why Dragging Your Team Isn't Leading
Sep 14, 20268 min
It's 4:30 on a Thursday, and you're standing in the truck bay having the same callback conversation with Jimmy for the third time this month. He nods. Monday comes. Another callback. And you're right back in the truck fixing it yourself. In this Freedom Fuel episode, Justin borrows a line from Dan Martell — stop being a tugboat, start being a lighthouse — and admits he spent years proud of how much he "delegated" when really he was just towing: handing out the what and keeping the why to himself. He walks through the math on why silent, unhappy customers are the real problem hiding behind low review numbers, and why a team member who only ever hears the what will always need somebody to drag them along. Justin shows exactly how he reframed a callback conversation with Jimmy — not by asking him to try harder, but by finally explaining what a callback actually costs him, the team, and the business. The result: a guy who can see the shore doesn't need a tugboat anymore. ⏱️ VIDEO CHAPTERS 0:00 — The Truck Bay Conversation You've Had Three Times This Month 0:45 — Today's Topic: Tugboat vs. Lighthouse 1:44 — Welcome to the Freedom Blueprint Podcast 2:15 — Dan Martell's Line That Changed How I Lead 2:53 — My Confession: I Called It Delegating, It Was Towing 3:18 — Back to Jimmy: Two Sides of the Same Conversation 3:38 — The Math on Your 950 Silent Customers 3:55 — Why Silence Isn't Satisfaction 4:17 — Why We Keep Towing: Speed, Assumption, and Ego 5:05 — Handing Jimmy a Picture Instead of a Task 5:29 — Widening It Out: What Silent Customers Cost the Team 5:47 — Landing It on the Business: The Cost of Replacing Customers 6:01 — What Changes When Jimmy Can See the Shore 6:47 — The Challenge: Explain the Why, Just Once 7:18 — Your Assignment for Today 7:23 — Share, Subscribe, and Leave a Review IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN ✅ The tugboat vs. lighthouse metaphor that reframes what real delegation looks like ✅ Why "explaining the why" isn't soft — it's the fastest way to stop dragging your team ✅ The math behind your silent, unhappy customers, and why a bad review is actually a gift ✅ How to hand someone a "why" instead of just a task, with a real script ✅ The one-conversation challenge to try with the person you've been pulling hardest Average leaders hand out the what and keep pulling. Great leaders hand out the why and let people find their own way. If you're tired of dragging your team through the same conversation every month, this episode is for you. Welcome to The Freedom Blueprint Podcast — short, powerful episodes to help home service business owners lead better, grow faster, and keep crushing it. Subscribe so you don't miss the next Freedom Fuel episode Share this with an owner who's still towing instead of shining #HomeServiceBusiness #HVACBusiness #PlumbingBusiness #ContractorMarketing #FreedomBlueprint #JustinDeese #LeadershipDevelopment #Delegation #ContractorTips #CustomerExperience
Recent guests on Freedom Blueprint for Home Services | HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Leadership, Business Growth. Study who booked and why before you pitch.
Every question we get asked before someone starts their trial.
If you have a concern about deliverability, AI quality, data privacy, or whether this will actually work for your specific situation, it's probably answered below.
What is the difference between Founder Solo and Founder Pro?
Founder Solo gives you 50 AI pitches per month using the credit model (Standard pitches cost 1 credit, Enriched pitches cost 2). Founder Pro raises that to 200 credits per month and adds full Booking Probability access, unlimited Magic Match, Apollo enrichment credits, and data export capabilities. Both plans use the same credit system, so you can stretch your monthly budget further by using Standard-mode drafting.
How do agency tiers work?
Agency tiers have no base fee. You pay per managed client and per talent profile. Agency Standard is $199 per client per month; Agency Pro is $399 per client per month. Both add $39 per talent profile per month. Your own team's user seats are always free.
What is a talent profile?
A talent profile represents one person (founder, executive, or spokesperson) you are booking onto podcasts. It includes their bio, topics, headshots, and outreach history. Team plans include 5 profiles; agency plans are pay-as-you-go.
Can I switch plans later?
Yes, at any time. Upgrades take effect immediately; downgrades apply at the end of the current billing period. Contact support if you need help migrating between plan families.
Do you offer a free trial?
Every paid plan includes a 15-day free trial. Your card is saved at signup but you will not be charged until day 16. Cancel any time from your dashboard.
What happens if I cancel?
You keep access until the end of your current billing period. No charges after that. Your data is retained for 30 days in case you reactivate.
Is the 20% annual discount automatic?
Yes. Select Annual on the pricing toggle and the discounted price is applied automatically at checkout. The annual price shown is the full year cost.
What if I have more than 50 profiles or 20 clients?
That is our Enterprise tier. Contact our sales team and we will build a custom plan with volume pricing, a dedicated account manager, and SLA guarantees.
