Trey McWilliams is a third-generation HVAC operator from East Texas and the founder of Blue Cardinal Home Services, a platform group now operating in over 20 locations across the home service trades.
Trey grew up riding shotgun with his grandfather — a Navy retiree who started the family business because he loved taking care of customers and didn't want to deal with employees or back-office work. Trey started drawing a paycheck at 14, ran a truck by 16, and by 22 he made the call that would change everything: he told his dad the lifestyle business needed to become a scaled business, and he'd pay the price to make it happen. From 2010 to 2019, he took McWilliams & Son Heating and Cooling from $1.2M to nearly $30M in revenue — then built Blue Cardinal Group on top of it to give other operators a home to take chips off the table without selling out to private equity.
In this episode, Trey breaks down the exact playbook he ran to scale:
The first hire that broke his $1M ceiling — and why it had to be a salesperson, not an operator
The math teacher who built his entire ops backbone from the call center up
The "rule of four" that governs every new market and trade he enters
Why he runs the business in groups of four crews so techs never miss their kids' baseball games
How he added plumbing without compromising the HVAC standard — including the academy model for homegrown technicians (95% of his field staff)
The mindset shift from "I'm in HVAC" to "I'm in the people-building business"
Why he built Blue Cardinal as the anti-private-equity platform for operators who care about culture and the long game
If you're an operator stuck between $1M and $5M and you can feel the ceiling — or if you're a second or third-generation owner wrestling with whether to scale past what your dad built — this one's for you.
Chapters
00:00 Intro00:40 Growing up in the family business — riding with grandpa at 1404:30 The 2010 turning point: "If not me, then who?"06:38 The exact playbook from $1.2M to $30M16:35 Hire #1: Why sales had to come before operations20:15 The math teacher who built the ops backbone23:30 The rule of four: how Trey enters new markets and trades27:00 Scaling is a journey of personal evolution30:00 Why he built Blue Cardinal Home Services36:00 Going from operator to capital allocator1:02:00 What's next for Blue Cardinal — and the operators he's looking for
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