IronMargin is a membership network for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical business owners doing $1M–$15M in revenue. You get the operating playbook from a sitting $20M+ PE-backed trades GM — SOPs, rebates, P&L reviews, and a direct line to someone who actually runs your kind of business.
Join trades operators building real margin — 10 founding spots available at 40% below launch pricing.
IronMargin is the operating membership for trades business owners who know their vocabulary but don't have the playbook. It is not a conference. It is not a motivational programme. It is the gap between knowing what EBITDA means and knowing what to do with yours — filled by a GM who is doing it at $20M right now.
Labour costs are up 18–22% since you last updated the book. Your part margins have eroded at the supply house without a formal review. You're running every call at the same price you charged when diesel was cheaper, wages were lower, and you had fewer techs to manage. Every ticket you close at an outdated price is a loss you can't see on any report.
If your top technician is running 65% billable efficiency on an 8-hour day, they're generating revenue on 5.2 hours and you're absorbing the overhead on the other 2.8. On a four-tech shop doing $1.5M, a 10-point improvement in average tech efficiency is worth $120,000 to $150,000 in additional billed revenue annually. You don't have a scorecard for this. Neither does most of your peer group.
Nexstar and Service Nation deliver good conferences and decent benchmarks. They do not give you a monthly review of your specific P&L. They do not build SOPs for your specific dispatch setup. The value is real — but it's generic, and generic advice at $2,000/month is expensive.
Maintenance agreements are the highest-margin, most predictable revenue a trades company can generate. A company doing $3M in revenue with a 15% attachment rate is generating roughly $450,000 in recurring revenue. Move that to 30% and you're at $900,000 — which increases your company's valuation multiple by as much as 1–2x at exit. You don't have a scripted conversion process. Your techs aren't trained to offer it consistently. And it's not tracked in ServiceTitan.
Whether it's a PE group calling, a strategic buyer reaching out, or a bank asking for three years of adjusted financials, the moment comes faster than anyone expects. The trades owners who get 6x EBITDA at exit are not smarter than you. They prepared for 24 months before the call. They had clean add-backs documented. They had a normalised owner compensation schedule. They had a tech stack that showed process, not chaos. You have time to prepare. The question is whether you're using it.
A 3-truck shop is typically leaking $40,000–$90,000/year across seven categories. Get the estimate for your numbers in two minutes.
The GM behind IronMargin is running a PE-backed, multi-trade home services company — HVAC, plumbing, and electrical — with 100+ employees and a $20M+ P&L right now. Not five years ago. Not in a case study. The problems being solved inside IronMargin are being solved live, this week, in a real dispatch environment.
Every SOP in the library — dispatch protocols, flat-rate pricing frameworks, tech scorecards, maintenance agreement programmes, ServiceTitan setup guides — was written for and used by a running trades company. These are not templates. They are the actual documents.
A contractor spending $200,000/year on parts and equipment captures approximately $6,000/year at the network's 3% blended rate. Core membership costs $5,964/year. The rebate network pays for the membership before the first coaching call.
IronMargin assumes you know what EBITDA means but may not know what a quality of earnings review looks like, which add-backs are defensible, or how to structure your org chart to reduce key-man risk before a sale. The playbooks, calls, and P&L reviews are built around these specific gaps.
Nexstar Core membership costs $1,200–$2,500/month and delivers benchmarks, conferences, and peer groups — no current operator on the call, no P&L review, no rebate network. IronMargin Core at $297/month (beta) delivers all three, plus the SOP library and the playbook downloads. The comparison is not close.
Most membership programmes bury the rebate conversation in a features list. IronMargin leads with it — because for most members, it is the most financially significant thing in the room.
A contractor spending $400,000/year on parts and equipment captures approximately $12,000/year — more than twice the annual Core membership cost. These are conservative figures: multi-trade operations managing fleet and insurance at scale frequently see blended rates of 4–5%.
Here is the maths:
Aggregated purchasing across major distributors and equipment manufacturers.
New vehicle purchasing programmes and national fleet service networks.
National supplier agreements for branded workwear, safety equipment, and field gear.
Group rates on general liability, workers' compensation, and commercial auto through trade-specific underwriters.
Business banking, payroll services, and equipment financing through preferred partners.
PE-backed trades companies access these rates through their platform's purchasing power. IronMargin aggregates that purchasing power for independent and owner-operated contractors at any revenue level. This is not a referral programme. These are negotiated network rates passed directly to members.
The operator's library with a monthly group call included.
$297/mo10 founding spots available
Everything in Core, plus a private call and a monthly P&L review.
$497/mo10 founding spots available
Your fractional GM. The full operating system.
$897/mo10 founding spots available
A fractional CFO costs $2,000–$5,000/month. A fractional COO or GM costs $8,000–$15,000/month. An EOS implementer costs $3,000–$5,000/quarter. A PE-readiness consultant charges $15,000–$30,000 for a one-time assessment. The maths are not close.
IronMargin was built by a General Manager currently running a PE-backed, multi-trade home services company — HVAC, plumbing, and electrical — with 100+ employees and a $20M+ P&L. Before that: US Air Force heavy construction (RED HORSE squadron), municipal administration, disaster restoration, and a career built in the field, not a classroom.
The coaching options available to trades operators fall into three categories: too expensive (PE-level consulting firms that don't work with sub-$50M companies), too generic (membership networks built on conference content and benchmarks), or taught by people who have never actually run a dispatch board.
IronMargin exists because none of those options are good enough for the owner who knows their numbers, has heard the vocabulary, and needs the specific operating playbook — not the theory.
The founder does not sell the brand with a name because the brand is not built on a personality. It is built on a system. The SOPs, the P&L frameworks, the rebate network, and the coaching content are the product. The name behind it is a GM, still in the field, still accountable to the same P&L problems every IronMargin member is solving.
Good. Keep it. IronMargin is not a replacement for peer benchmarking and conference access — it is the layer that Nexstar and Service Nation don't provide: a current operator reviewing your specific numbers, an SOP library built from a running operation, and a rebate network that pays for the membership. The two work together. If you are spending $2,000/month on a membership where nobody knows your P&L, IronMargin Core at $297/month (beta) is not a competing expense — it is a complementary one with a documented financial return.
The time commitment for Core is one 60-minute group call per month and however long it takes you to read the monthly P&L analysis or download an SOP when you need it. That is two to three hours per month, maximum. If you are too busy to spend three hours per month on the operating system of your business, the problem IronMargin is designed to solve — your business running you instead of you running it — is more advanced than a membership can fix on its own. But for the owner who has the capacity to use it: three hours per month is the threshold, and the ROI is documented in the rebate section of this page.
The rebate maths are on this page and they are conservative. A contractor spending $200,000/year on supply captures $6,000/year in rebates at the 3% network rate. Core costs $5,964/year. That is the floor — the return before a single SOP is used, before a single coaching call is taken. Beyond the rebate network: one identified pricing inefficiency in a monthly P&L review, properly corrected, is typically worth $1,000–$5,000/month in recovered margin for a company doing $2M+ in revenue. One defensible EBITDA add-back, properly documented before a PE sale, is worth multiples of the annual membership cost. The value is not aspirational. It is specific and calculable. If you are not capturing it within 90 days of joining, contact the founder directly.
IronMargin Core is $297/month during beta ($497/month at launch), Pro is $497/month during beta ($797/month at launch), and Elite is $897/month during beta ($1,497/month at launch). Core includes the monthly group coaching call, the full SOP library, the rebate network, playbook downloads, and the member community. Pro adds a private 30-minute coaching call and a monthly written P&L review. Elite adds ServiceTitan or FieldEdge implementation support, quarterly org chart and EOS sessions, a quarterly live P&L review call, an annual PE sale readiness assessment, and direct async voice access. Beta pricing is 40% below launch pricing and locked for life as long as membership remains active.
IronMargin is for trades business owners — HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or multi-trade — running $1M to $15M in annual revenue with three to 30 employees. Members are typically in one of three situations: the growing-but-bleeding owner whose revenue is up while net margin is down and dispatch is chaotic; the pre-sale owner with an LOI in their inbox who needs to know which EBITDA adjustments are defensible before signing; or the post-close owner who has taken PE money, faces quarterly board meetings, and needs a peer network of people who have been in that exact position.
IronMargin is accepting the first 10 founding members at 40% below launch pricing — locked permanently as long as membership remains active. Every founding member receives a personal onboarding call with the founder within 48 hours of joining and attends the first group coaching call within seven days.
This is not a countdown timer. There are 10 spots because that is the right cohort size for the first group call to be a working session rather than a webinar. When they are filled, the next cohort opens at launch pricing.
If you run a trades business and you are serious about your margin, this is the call to make.
Claim Your Founding Member Spot — $297/monthBeta pricing available for Core, Pro, and Elite. Spots fill in order of application.