Yeah.

So three, four, four, let's say four years ago, we saw in our industry, private equity activity really at a, at a high level.

And we saw a lot of contractors being eaten up, bought out by private equity firms.

And then that started to slow down a little bit, at least the pace of it did.

And now we've seen now in 2025, 2026, that pace pick up tremendously.

And that was kind of predicted because a lot of these private equity firms like to flip their investments every three, four or five years, whatever it may be.

So a couple of trends that we are seeing is obviously a lot of businesses independently being bought out by private equity.

last kind of not even necessarily question but really you know opportunity to kind of give you the mic and let you let you go with it you know based on everything that the research has shown you over the years what's the one thing that you want to make sure that today's contractor that's listening to this show understands about preparing their business for the future

Can you explain in as simple of terms as possible what, what, what that pricing structure looks like and how it works?

Yeah.

So I would say the number one downfall of the majority of contractors is they don't know how to price their jobs correctly, and they're leaving margin on the table.

The average net profitability of a heating and air contractor, according to our Contractor of the Future study across the country, is plus 6%.

Now, that might seem when you look at it as, well, that's pretty good.

That means the average contractor is profitable, right? But what our data and experience clearly shows that in order for a contractor to grow and to sustain growth over time, that requires a minimum of plus 10% net profitability at the end of the year to be able to invest in your people, in training, in your fleet, in software, marketing, you name it.

So what that says is our industry, the average contractor, is not profitable enough to sustain growth and reinvest in the areas that they do, and one of the main reasons is because of job costing and the lack of education around it.

I'm just getting annoyed by it 'cause every day someone's got a company that's able to help with AI tools.

Tell us more ab- about what you found there.

Sure.

So there are still contractors out there who only provide one option, right? They go out to, let's say, a home and, um, that homeowner is having some issues with their system and they say, "You know, this is, this is what we should do.

Here's your option.

Take it or leave it," right? And that's very old school thinking.

That's not progressive at all.

So what has been kind of considered in our industry for some time now is having a good, better, best option.

But for those that do, talk about this finding around marketing spend and maybe which levers are the highest ROI that, uh, uh, that you guys saw, you know, underneath the, uh, marketing umbrella.