Success Stories: Evan & Russell's Journey in Field Service Entrepreneurship | Swivl Sessions

Evan Pantano and Russell Ölner share their journey from separate service businesses to co-founders of a integrated multi-brand operation. Their story reveals the power of complementary partnerships, the importance of knowing your niche, and the challenges of scaling skilled trades. From Evan's corporate construction background to Russell's hands-on carpentry mentorship journey, the duo discusses how they discovered each other through mutual connections, navigated the early operational chaos of combining businesses, and refined their strategy to focus on high-margin prefab kitchen installations. The conversation covers their realistic expectations about business ownership, the failure of paid marketing versus referral-based growth, strategic use of Home Depot Pro accounts for lead generation, and their ambitious goal of installing 10 prefab kitchens per month to hit $1M annual revenue. They address the growing pains of hiring and retaining skilled workers, maintaining work-life balance while running multiple brands, and the importance of systems and delegation.