I flipped houses before I did the books.
Now I run the numbers for the people who build and fix them.
For five years I ran a residential construction company. I bought houses, renovated them, and sold them. I have chased a draw that was three weeks late while payroll came due Friday, and I have covered the gap out of my own account. That is why I do this work for trades companies instead of for anyone with a QuickBooks login.
Jake Lenderman
I'm Jake Lenderman. I run finance for plumbing, HVAC, electrical, garage door, and roofing companies across Central Texas doing $5M to $15M a year. If you run crews and trucks and bill by the job, we should talk. I have managed more than $20M in trades revenue since 2022.
$20M managed since 2022
The pattern I see
Most owners who call me grew revenue three years running and never took home a dollar more. You feel that long before you can point at it, because a P&L will not show you where it went.
Nobody has looked at the list of who owes you money since spring. Somewhere on it is $50,000 that is 90 days past due, and you will not find it until December. Your tech approved a change order in a driveway and nobody sent the invoice. Your material costs climbed 20% and your price list never moved.
I fill the CFO seat at a company size where hiring a full-time CFO makes no sense.
Where I learned it
Before the trades I spent seven years at AT&T building operations for a contact center supporting more than 35,000 commercial accounts. Then I ran the business side of a Ford service center and grew it from $21,000 a month to $108,000. A service center is a trades shop with a different sign on it: techs, bays, job tickets, and margin on every ticket.
After that came the five years of construction. I reached the books through the operations rather than the other way around, which is why I can read a job cost report and also tell you what went wrong on the job.
What one audit turned up
Gross margin swung 19.8 points across jobs with the same scope, the same crews, and the same materials at an eight-figure trades company. Nobody in the building could say which jobs made money. They had never measured profit below the revenue line.
What I do not do
I do not file your returns and I do not do your taxes. Your CPA does that, and I work alongside them rather than around them. I run the finance function between filings: the forecasting, pricing, and margin work a $10M company needs and a tax preparer is not hired to do. My clients keep the CPA they already trust.