The Growth Paradox
If you're running an electrical, HVAC, plumbing, landscaping, or other self-performing trades business somewhere between $2M and $10M in revenue, you’ve added crew members, bought more equipment, and taken on more jobs, by all outward measures your business looks successful. But when you sit down with the numbers, something doesn’t add up.
What most contractors aren’t told is that the standard way of measuring job profitability is broken. Gross Margin is a Liar and a Thief. It looks like an indicator of health but it isn't. It leaves out how each job truly drives overhead and that gap is where profit quietly disappears.
You’re not losing money because you aren't good at your craft or you can't generate revenue, you’re losing it because the reporting you trust wasn’t built to show you the full picture.
Once you gain visibility of the real number— by job, service line, or customer—the decisions that used to feel like guesses start to feel obvious.
Metrics Readiness Assessment (14-30 days)
A structured diagnostic that examines how your financials are built, how jobs are being costed, and where your reporting has gaps. We review everything under NDA and hand you clear visibility of where things stand without sugar-coating or vague recommendations.
Few jobs: Actually builds value
Early-entrepreneurs say yes to everything. It’s a survival instinct that makes sense at first. But at some point, volume is no longer the answer. The next level is about the right work.
That’s what Trades Alignment helps you see. Through a structured engagement, we get inside your financials, rebuild how overhead is being allocated, and show your finance, sales, and service delivery teams exactly where the business is building value and where it's giving it away.
Operational Alignment Assessment
(30-60 days)
A multi-step process of deeper engagement where the real work happens. We rebuild your overhead allocation from the ground up, implement the 5-Pillar Profit Tool to surface true job profitability, educate your team on reading and acting on the numbers, and create a sequenced roadmap of what to fix and in what order.
Ongoing Advisory
For organizations ready to keep building, we offer targeted improvement projects, KPI development, strategic coordination, and for select businesses with the right cultural fit, embedded partnerships with equity participation.
About the Founder
This isn’t just theory. It’s two decades of doing the work.
Tom Atkinson is a U.S. Army veteran who served as a petroleum supply specialist and cable systems technician, including a deployment to Kuwait. He spent more than 20 years inside the trades, running crews, managing projects, and eventually co-founding and co-managing a special systems contracting firm that handled fire alarm, AV, low voltage, and network cabling for schools, hospitals, and government clients. He successfully co-managed this firm until selling it in 2024.
What makes Trades Alignment different
Visibility
Tom worked in the trades business for 20+ years. The insight here comes from lived experience, not case studies or theory.
1
alignment
We don’t celebrate gross margin. We dig past it for true profitability by job, customer, location, and service line.
2
ongoing support
Visibility, Alignment, then optimization: job costing, revenue recognition, 5-Pillar Profit implementation and much more.
3
We teach your team, not just the owner
Financial clarity that lives only in the owner’s head doesn’t scale. We build shared language across finance, sales, and service delivery.