ABOUT TYLER MARTIN
Fractional CFO for Home Services
I've Been on Both Sides of the Desk
I’m Tyler Martin, a California CPA. I’ve spent most of my career on the operator side.
I built a CPA firm from scratch and sold it. Then I partnered in an engineering services firm, and we grew it to $25 million in annual revenue before selling it. Two companies grown and sold.
So when I sit down across from an HVAC owner and we’re both staring at the same P&L, I’m not reading you a chapter from a textbook. I know what it feels like to sweat a Friday payroll. I know what a bad hire costs eighteen months later. I know the long, unglamorous work of building something somebody else actually wants to buy.
I’ve also interviewed more than a hundred home service owners on the Profit & Grit podcast about exactly those problems.
That’s the whole reason Profit & Grit exists.
What does a fractional CFO actually do for a home service business?
CFO-level numbers without the $250,000 salary.
In practice that means knowing your real gross margin by department instead of one blended number. Knowing which trucks make money and which ones you’re subsidizing. Knowing what you can afford to pay a good technician before you offer it, not after. Knowing whether growth is actually generating cash or quietly consuming it. And knowing what your business is worth long before you’re ready to sell it.
Most owners I meet aren’t short on hustle. They’re flying with an instrument panel that doesn’t work. My job is to fix the panel and then teach you to read it. If you want to see how I think about that, the owner’s guide to cash flow for home service companies is the longest version of it I’ve written down.
Why don't you do taxes?
Because tax work looks backward and I'm interested in what happens next.
A tax return tells you what already happened, twelve months after you could have done anything about it. Compliance matters and you should have a great tax preparer. That's a different job from the one you need when you're deciding whether to open a second location, buy out a partner, or take the offer that just landed on your desk.
I'm a CPA by credential and training, which means I can read your financials to a standard most advisors can't. I just don't point that skill at filing deadlines.
What did you actually build?
A billable-hour services business, which is structurally the same animal as yours.
We scaled it to $25 million over 10 years with a partner. The model was mostly billable hours with some flat-fee work, which is exactly the transition home service companies are making right now, moving from time-and-materials to flat-rate pricing and discovering their margin doesn't behave the way it used to.
We had the same problems you have. Utilization. Pricing. Finding people who could do the work and then finding people who could lead the people who do the work. A partnership that had to be structured so it survived disagreement. And eventually a sale process where the buyer knew things about our numbers we should have known first.
I lived every one of those. That's not a credential you can study for.
BUSINESS SECTORS
Who do you work with?
Owners of HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing companies, typically between $3 million and $15 million in revenue.
That range is deliberate. Below it you usually need a good bookkeeper more than you need me. Above it you can generally afford a full-time CFO. In between is where owners are running a genuinely complicated business on reporting built for a much simpler one, and where the difference between a 6% and an 11% net margin is life-changing money.
PROFIT & GRIT PODCAST
What's the podcast about?
Profit & Grit is where I interview home service owners and operators about what actually happened, not the version that goes in the case study.
Over the last five years, across this show and the one I hosted before it, I’ve interviewed hundreds of multi-million-dollar business owners. Guests have included operators running everything from a 40-truck plumbing company to a portfolio on pace for $150 million.
I ask the questions I wanted answered when I was in the chair. Why did you stall at $8 million? What did the buyout actually cost you? What did you get wrong about pricing? The good episodes are the ones where somebody tells the truth about a decision that didn’t work.
It’s also, selfishly, how I stay current. Nothing keeps you honest like a hundred owners a year telling you what’s actually happening in the field.
THE DIFFERENCE
What makes you different from other fractional CFOs?
Most people offering this service are one of three things: a bookkeeper who has moved upmarket, an accountant who has never operated, or a finance professional out of private equity or investment banking.
I’m none of those. I’m a licensed CPA who built two companies and sold both of them, and who has spent five years interviewing the people doing what you’re doing. I’ve been on the seller’s side of a real transaction and I know what the buyer was looking at.
I’m not a tax guy. I’m not a private equity guy. I’m an operator who can read a P&L properly.
Credentials and background
- Certified Public Accountant, licensed in California.
- Scaled a services company to $25M in revenue with a partner; sold it.
- Founded a CPA firm and sold it.
- Host of the Profit & Grit podcast; 84 episodes with home service owners and experts.
- Previously host of Think Business with Tyler.
- Based in San Jose, California; working with trades owners nationwide.
- Memberships: Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA), Women in HVACR and LadyTitans.
GET STARTED
Want to talk?
If you’re running a home service company between $3M and $15M and you’re making decisions on numbers you don’t fully trust, that’s the conversation I’m good at.
NO pitch deck, NO obligation
