Zero to $50M

Most $50 million companies are built on debt, outside capital, or aggressive acquisitions.

Thomas Mechanical was built on none of them.

Martin Lowry spent the last 22 years bootstrapping his commercial HVAC business from zero to $40–$50 million in annual revenue entirely organically. He avoided the "growth at all costs" trap and instead built a company designed to last.

I recently sat down with Martin at Clemson University (my alma mater) to deconstruct exactly how he did it. Here’s the blueprint for building a $50M business the hard way (which, as it turns out, is usually the best way).

Watch the interview on YouTube below:

Martin is an engineer by trade. He’s analytical, risk-averse, and methodical. He started Thomas Mechanical without a massive war chest, bootstrapping every dollar in the early days.

However, sheer hustle has a limit. When the business eventually plateaued, Martin realized that what got him to $5 million wouldn't get him to $50 million. He couldn't just run a bigger version of a small company, he had to fundamentally re-engineer the business from the ground up.

Here are the three specific shifts he made to break that ceiling:

The Lesson: You can hustle your way to $5M. You have to engineer your way to $50M.

Most business owners treat recruiting technicians as an administrative task: post a job, wait for resumes, hope someone shows up.

Martin treats recruiting like business development. He doesn’t wait for people to come to him, he picks up the phone, takes potential candidates out to lunch, and pitches them on the vision of the company just like he’d pitch a client on a $1M contract.

He also looks outside his industry for the best talent. He once hired a project manager from the fire sprinkler world who admitted, "I don't know anything about mechanical."

Martin didn't blink. "I don't care. I'll teach you that... you know how to be a project manager."

That bet paid off. That specific hire eventually identified a massive new revenue stream, leading Thomas Mechanical to open a fire protection division that is now a significant chunk of their business.

The takeaway: Hire for work ethic, drive and cultural fit, train for the technicals. And never wait for talent to come to you.

The biggest bottleneck in scaling a trade business isn't leads, it's labor.

In the commercial construction world, a toxic culture often emerges, something Martin called "Kingdom Building." This is where a Project Manager hoards their favorite crew. They say, "These are my guys. I need them for my project," even if another project is burning down and needs help.

Martin crushes this behavior immediately.

"You don't want people building little kingdoms within your company," Martin explains. "We have a staff meeting every Thursday... If a project is behind, someone might say 'I got some guys over here, I'll let you have some of mine.' That's a guy trying to help another guy for the success of the company."

Martin reinforces this culture by incentivizing the right behaviors across his team. Instead of paying PMs a commission solely based on the profit of their specific jobs, he uses a company-wide profit-sharing model, so if the company makes a profit, everybody gets a share. 

This aligns incentives. A PM is now motivated to loan his crew to a project that’s running behind because if that project fails, his bonus takes a hit, too.

Martin admits his formula is currently "more art than science," based on tenure, salary, and overall contribution. But as you scale, you need to formalize this.

Martin admits he didn't know a balance sheet from a P&L until he went back to school for his MBA. That education taught him the single most dangerous trap in the construction industry: Confusing profitability with cash flow.

"There's a lot of really profitable businesses out there that go under because they can't cash flow," Martin warns.

In large commercial projects, you front the labor and materials, and you might not get paid for 60 or 90 days. If you grow too fast, you can run out of cash even while showing a "profit" on paper.

To combat this, Martin lives by the WIP Report (Work In Progress).

"We have a WIP report at all times... I get that every week," Martin says.

This report tells him exactly where every project stands regarding costs incurred versus revenue billed. It is the dashboard that prevents the company from overextending itself. If you aren't reviewing a WIP report weekly, you are flying blind, he says. 

In an era where too many people are focused on get rich quick schemes, Martin’s story is a refreshing reminder of reality.

He didn't pivot every 6 months. He doesn’t chase shiny objects. He picked a lane and he stayed in it for 22 years. The result? A $50M asset that he owns 100% of.

If you want to replicate Martin's success: