The Home Service Expert Podcast
The One Mindset Shift That Separates Good Operators From Great Ones
22 May 2026
Chapter 1: What mindset shift separates good operators from great ones?
Just know you should be the dumbest guy in the room. If you want to be a constant learner and thinking about your future self, you really start to hang around with the best people. You put yourself in the right rooms all the time.
How do people think about sharing success broadly? It's both financial, but when you're in a meeting with someone, are they hogging the ball? Was it all I's, all me's, or are they a we person? That's abundance. That's that kind of concept of being broader. Those are things that we look for that show up in small subtle ways when you spend time with people.
Chapter 2: Why is being the dumbest person in the room a smart strategy?
Those are the characteristics that I think can take a business from a hundred of revenue to a billion of revenue and beyond. It's like people that think that way.
Welcome back to the Home Service Extra. Today I got John Block visiting us from Dallas. He's an expert in private equity sales business and he is the founder and CEO of Unity Partners. John is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Unity Partners, a principle-based private equity firm focused on partnering with businesses to accelerate growth while creating value for all the stakeholders.
He's a dedicated family man with a third baby on the way, and he's a runner and a passionate cook who values time spent creating and connecting with loved ones.
I'm one of the lucky ones today and always. Glad to be here. You said it. I've got my third on the way, which puts me in the camp of perpetually lucky as I wake up every day and see my two soon-to-be three little ones and have an awesome team of people I'm surrounded with day in and day out at work, something I'm sure you can relate to.
That's certainly, you stack those things up and you know you're lucky when you have an amazing partner in life, amazing kids, and awesome teammates. Hard to beat that combination.
Yeah, you know, private equity is a, I love it. But also I hear the sides of it. Like you got LPs, you got people depending on you. HVAC had a rough stretch this past year. There's just a lot of things changing so fast. I'm just curious, how do you balance it?
We always talk about staying true to our foundations. It's that simple idea. We always come back to when things are great, stay true to your foundations. When things are rougher, stay true to your foundations. For us, it comes back to trying to find ways to get better. Every day waking up, little improvements.
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Chapter 3: What does private equity really look for in a business?
Again, whether you're on the top of the universe, there's always ways to push to do more and get better.
Or whether you're going through a tougher spell in a business, in a market, whatever, you're still going to owe it to yourself, owe it to your team, owe it to each other, your investors in our case, or our partners that operate businesses, the employees at our portfolio companies, the people behind our investors who benefit.
We owe it to all of them to wake up every day and look to get a little bit better.
I love that. Take us back. Take us back on your journey, I guess, you know, from everything from what got you, you know, into where you're at today, what you're looking forward to. Maybe some family stuff, too. I just want to hear, let the audience know who you are.
Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. My dad was a roofer. Mom was a stay-at-home mom. I did not dream of being in private equity because I didn't know what private equity was growing up. Yeah. Tommy, I probably thought one day it would be you, to be honest.
I looked around at people that had small businesses, which of course you're using now, but when you started, I looked around and said, people that are running small, whether it's trades, plumbing, et cetera, as I said, my dad was in roofing, that's what I grew up with, and that's what I always thought I would do. Started my career... Well, I went to watch UN St.
Louis, played sports, ended up having a chance to play Division III, so I was a hero, but played Division III football, did that, and then started my career in consulting. and had the good fortune of getting a chance to just learn how to think.
I tell people that the beauty of consulting is you get to stare at a lot of different things and just learn how to break down problems, learn how to think, assess situations. I did that for a couple of years. And then I got into private equity where I spent a couple of years as an associate, at which point I often joke I was the master of the universe.
We all know the 26-year-old version of me who has done consulting and private equity and thinks they're pretty hot. So I went down this journey of thinking that and thought I'd go buy a business. You probably run into people like me 15 years ago that have done that exact thing, and you're probably pretty happy to say, there's a lot you need to learn.
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Chapter 4: How can operators balance growth with foundational values?
So I just want to explain a couple of things. First and foremost, you're able to get leverage on the company's EBITDA. Depending on the business, maybe it's three, maybe it's five, maybe it's seven companies. But you need to have those banking relationships to be able to get that kind of leverage.
And then, you know, the day one, the principal company that did the deal is liable to make those payments out of the profit. And it's a – you know what? I love PE because it's just a simple, great formula. And the reason I did it is because it gave me a blank check to grow with somebody that I knew would be looking out for us that's been through the rodeo a bunch for
But, you know, first you need the banking relationships to kind of get that debt from the EBITDA. What did the first deal look like and what made you want to do it, if you don't mind sharing?
Yeah, maybe I'll start by sharing just a little bit of our strategy. And I'll start with our why quickly because I think understanding our firm allows you to better understand everything we do, you know, downstream. We start with our why. Simon Sinek wrote the book Start With Why. We love that philosophy, capture the heart, win the audience.
And for us, our why is building better together, those three words. First, we're building. We start by looking for a strong, ambitious leader that we can partner with to try to build a world-class platform. We love the connotation of roll up your sleeves and get to work. We have a mix of that.
of investors and operators on our team we have 20 teammates by the end of the year it'll be 24 25 that mix looks like um kind of 40 investors and 40 operators and 20 firm operations so very intentionally a group of operators that can come in alongside these strong ambitious leaders and roll up our sleeves and get to work
We don't just want to be a bunch of investment jocks sitting on the sideline thinking we're smarter than the world because we have MBAs. It's the proper mix of investors and operators coming together is our approach to help build. So that word build. Second, better. Big believers in being the best and getting better. Constant improvement mindset. Make progress every single day.
Better operationally, strategically, financially. Talk a lot about building better culturally. We want leaders that share this desire to build ownership culture together. High degrees of communication, accountability, transparency, a spirit of abundance. We wrap all of our businesses with employee ownership plans. So we want leaders that lean into that.
Think, okay, I want to build a scalable platform, scalable culture within it that allows us to be not just bigger but better. Finally, together, bringing unique individuals together into one whole that's stronger. We didn't accidentally choose the name Unity Partners.
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Chapter 5: What does the 'who not how' principle mean for teams?
And we leaned right back in and said, these are the people we look for. People that have those characteristics, that have built something special, that are at the beginning, have a huge runway ahead, and are looking for a partner that can help them. And so that's kind of the bread and butter of what we try to do.
And our first investment, I think, has proven that to a T. We're kind of three years in the businesses. The North is $60 million of revenue this year, so go from $10 to $60 in three years. That's the kind of journey we try to go on and keep going from there.
We... What was I going to tell you? The... You said something about share. How much do you guys, is it usually, it's usually 10 to 15% you give as an EIP slash P unit plan, right? You give out depending on the company and the size they want to grow to and how much stickiness you need and plus making it great for the outcome of the leaders and all the way down.
I love ownership works that KKR kind of figured out as well. That's like a little bit more, it's a little too ESOP-y for me, but I still, I still like it. But What are your thoughts? What does that do to a business when you share ownership like that?
So we, we do exactly what you said, kind of 10 to 15% incentive plans and we carve out 20 to 30% of that. So, you know, two to 4%, something like that, that we give to all employees and we share broadly in a effectively a employee appreciation plan or, or kind of phantom ownership plan, um, And we do that as part of our concept of ownership culture.
We don't think it's enough to create ownership culture. We think it's an important pillar of it. But we talk a lot about communication. And if all you did was give someone an employee ownership plan but didn't talk about it and didn't talk about the business, the business's goals, where you're headed, you wouldn't achieve that ownership culture that we strive for it.
We also talk a lot about transparency. It's not enough just to talk. You have to talk openly about what's going on. Goods, bads, indifference in the business. Lean in to being transparent. We think that allows you and that builds accountability. And that's another key pillar for us in this idea of ownership culture is high degrees of accountability.
We all want to win together and hold each other accountable to doing so. And then the kind of fourth thing comes back to that ownership idea of spirit of abundance, sharing broadly. Big believers that Employee success leads to customer success, leads to financial success. If you pay it back, you win together.
But we don't think it's enough just to say, hey, I put in place an employee ownership plan, so I created ownership culture. We think that's a kind of failing proposition of sorts because you miss the other links that are extremely important to create that kind of feeling of ownership for people.
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Chapter 6: How do you measure success beyond just revenue?
Other times it's a lot of the different people. partners or leaders within the business that we've acquired that stay on and stay active and continue to build or run their office or their region or their city, whatever the case may be. So we respect the heck out of and think there's a ton of value driven by people that have built businesses and the founders that we're able to partner with.
We also have instances where founders are looking for a transition plan because they might want to retire or they might want to move on to the next thing. And we know there needs to be a solution for that as well. And as business builders, we look to have solutions for that as well and can be kind of amenable and understanding.
We love it when the founders stay on as investors and roll over equity into our platforms even if they look to retire. We like that alignment that's created with kind of shared ownership as well.
I think it's really smart. If the founder wants to leave and not roll, how does that change? Let's just say they're 66 years old and they're kind of burned out and they want to enjoy life.
The first thing we tend to look at, if I were to look at your business model as an example, is do you have a GM in the city that they're operating in that can take on more value? If the answer is yes... then we can make that add-on because now we've got a team that's ready to run with more volume and ready to take it on.
If it was a new city and you didn't have a GM ready to go to cover it, that can be really hard. That can be hard, yeah.
You need to have a – if you're a great leader, you've got to be training no matter what the next – you get hit by a bus. You should be always training leaders.
And if you could drop someone from a different office that wanted to go to that city and take over, great. But if you didn't have that person, then I think you're kind of fooling yourself thinking you can acquire a business that has no leader and do well with it. So it's very situational is the short answer, Tom.
You just kind of have to be smart, look at the situation, and say, do you have the team to be able to handle that? If you do, great. Great. That can be a perfectly fine acquisition. What I was going to ask –
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Chapter 7: What are the characteristics of successful founder-led businesses?
I mean, it's like that's not what I – you know, I want it to work out for everybody, but this is not what we're building for. You know, yes, it's going to go well for everybody. And the reason I call it a speed bump is some people leave. Some people are exhausted.
I mean, going through – when you start getting into the $100 million of EBITDA, you know, you're going to look like – mine wasn't that big, but I lost some hair. It's a lot. You got a lot of meetings. There's crazy. I mean, I think they got my blood. They got my DNA. They knew what my grandpa did. No, I'm not kidding. It wasn't that big. But it's a lot to go through for a team.
And just some people are like, man, that was exhausting. So sometimes there's recalibration of the team a little bit. It's usually a good thing. Most of the people stay. and they want to do another tour. And then some people, maybe you had somebody great, FP&A, right? Just a wizard. And they want to go on to become a CFO, and the position doesn't exist at that company.
You might have some fallout, and that's expected, correct?
I think there's often some fallout. I think speed bump's a fair term. I sometimes use an accelerator, though, because I've seen it happen that way, too. When you have success, everyone looks around and says – oh shoot, we've got something special here. And they show up the next day and say, let's work harder than yesterday because we're doing something special here.
So I've kind of seen it both ways where capitalization events can be accelerators as well. They're exhausting, but I'm sure you felt this. Sometimes when you're under the most stress, most tired, et cetera, the next day you're the first out of bed. And so there's a bit of that that occurs too. And, you know, you gotta, you gotta stay balanced.
It's a marathon, not a sprint, but we find for the right people. A lot of times it's an accelerator and it kind of energizer of sorts.
I know a company recently put $300 million in the business and they don't plan on seeing that money come back till 2028. And it's a technology company. It's actually a hardware company that does some software things as well. And it's, I love that because they're willing to make the investments for tomorrow. And it's very hard. I love Jeff Bezos when he said, who cares what the stock price is at?
I know the health of the company. We'll just buy back some of the shares cheaply. I got the five-year plan. You know what I mean? It's interesting. What do you do with a founder who might not have an MBA, not be used to the conferences, going in and having a board meeting every month?
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Chapter 8: How can leaders cultivate a culture of accountability and transparency?
Because I want to know everything, how it works. I ask them questions. I fly out to New York. I mean, they've invited me, but I fly unannounced. I'm like, hey, listen, I'm going to come out there next week. And I've just really, really leaned in knowing there's so much to learn. You know what I mean?
Be the best at getting better. You live the mantra. You wake up every day saying, what can I do to get a bit better? That's what we love. When we find people like that, we say, let's go. It's kind of that simple.
Is there anything that you took out of the early days at Bain? I know that was a long time ago. You were just a young lad, but was there anything, or along the way, maybe beyond that, that really, really, really was impactful?
I think one of the things I learned at Bain, and I get asked this coming up from a consulting versus a banking channel. I think in the consulting channel, you learn a lot how to ask questions, be active, be forced to... drop into a business, and lead conversations early and think, do a lot of thinking. And I'm forever grateful for that, the learning how to think element of consulting.
So I think there's a ton of value in spending a couple years early in your career doing just that. So forever grateful for that.
Yeah, that deep thinking. How many people do you usually meet with before –
By the way, sometimes it's deep thinking. Sometimes it's not that deep. It's just, you know, how does your business work? You know, which is a little bit offensive in consulting. Sometimes it's the truth that people, that reputation of like, it's not very deep. It's kind of shallow. But, you know, still, it's good.
Well, it's interesting. I've met a lot of different business types. It's an interesting thing. It's like I feel like I know home service pretty well. It's funny because Ken Goodrich with Gettle had originally called me up along with Tom Howard, and he said, you know, Tommy, I feel like you're probably on the top of your game.
He's like, I haven't really met anybody that has studied and applied these principles and has been as successful. He goes, but when you know what these PE guys know, he goes, you'll be –
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