From $2.5M and Breaking Even to $3.5M With Margin to Spare
Case Study: Renewal Solutions Inc., a kitchen, bathroom, and basement remodeling company in Hazlet, NJ
Thomas Cougan never quit his day job.
He’s still a New York City firefighter running shifts. And in between those shifts, he built Renewal Solutions from a single $250,000 job in Staten Island into a full operation.
Now, Thomas has six trucks on the road, a showroom in Hazlet, and a team that includes a project manager, a field consultant, a business development manager, and nine in-house crew.
Most people can’t build one career. Thomas built two.
But it wasn’t always like this…
Before partnering with Contracting Empire, Renewal Solutions’ revenue stayed flat at $2.5 million for two consecutive years. In the second year, he brought in $2.2 million in revenue but spent $2.1 million in business expenses.
It looked like a business that was winning. But the books told a different story.
The leads were sporadic. Four calls in three days, then silence for a week. The clients coming in weren’t always the right fit: budget shoppers drawn to a company that used to market itself as “friendly on your wallet.”
He’d also been paying $900/month for SEO for five years and getting nothing from it.
And Thomas was still stuck in the middle of everything. Production, scheduling, job sites. A firefighter running into burning buildings on one shift and running a remodeling company the next.
Something had to give.
He wasn’t unskilled. He wasn’t unfocused. He had more discipline in his left hand than most business owners carry in their whole body.
But discipline without a system doesn’t scale. It just burns hotter until it burns out.
Then he partnered with us.
- Revenue climbed from $2.2M to $3.5M.
- Rankings went through the roof.
- Lead flow became consistent.
- High-ticket kitchen jobs started leading the charge, with homeowners walking into the showroom ready to buy.
- Landed a commercial project (a full play café build-out), a category he'd never touched before.
- Hired a new business development manager, a new project manager, and an office manager, and finally got himself off the production floor.
- Went from spinning in place to building something that could run without him standing in the middle of it.
The Battle Plan
In the spring of 2025, we sat down with Thomas for nearly four hours and built a real plan.
We weren’t looking to patch the leaks. We wanted to rebuild the whole pipeline.
Because Thomas didn’t need someone to throw ads at his business and hope something stuck, he’d already been down that road.
Three things had to happen:
Stop bleeding money.
Build the engine.
A new website written in Thomas’s voice. SEO targeting the right zip codes and income levels. Google Ads and Facebook campaigns targeting homeowners who are already looking to hire. Every channel feeding one pipeline, every dollar tracked, nothing disappearing into the void.
Get Thomas out of the middle.
When you fix the foundation, the leads come in clean.
When the leads come in clean, you stop chasing the wrong clients.
When you stop chasing the wrong clients, your margins come back.
When your margins come back, you can build the team.
When you build the team, you can stop being the bottleneck.
When you stop being the bottleneck, the business grows, whether you’re on a job site or on a shift at your other job.
That’s the plan we executed. Here’s how it played out.
Turning Point #1: From $900/Month of Nothing to SEO That Actually Ranks
For five years, Thomas paid $900/month for SEO with nothing to show for it…
… except for a Google Business profile that sat there collecting dust while competitors owned the searches Thomas should have been winning.
He knew something was wrong. He just didn’t know what, or how deep the problem went.
When we stepped in, we went to work on the foundation.
Raul, our data scientist, mapped out Monmouth County. He identified the zip codes with the right home values and household incomes, flagged the areas to target hard, and cut out the towns that were never going to produce high-ticket buyers.
Morganville, Holmdel, Marlboro, and Colts Neck. That’s where the right homeowners lived. So, that’s where we pointed our strategy.
Then, we created website content that actually served those homeowners. Not generic AI slop that Google ignores. Real content built around Thomas’s voice, his process, his projects, and his market.
Content that made Renewal Solutions look exactly like what it was: the most professional remodeling operation in the area.
Eight months later, Thomas said it himself: rankings for kitchens, bathrooms, and basements were going through the roof. Renewal Solutions finally showed up in front of homeowners who are already looking and ready to spend.
From five years of nothing to real results after eight months of strategic SEO.
That’s the difference between an agency that takes your money and one that actually knows what it’s doing.
Turning Point #2: From Sporadic Calls to a Lead Engine That Doesn't Sleep
A phone that rang when it felt like it and went quiet when he needed it most. That was Thomas’s reality.
No predictability. No pipeline. Just hope, and hope is not a lead generation strategy.
The problem wasn’t that homeowners in Monmouth County weren’t spending money on remodeling. They were. The problem was:
- They couldn't find Thomas. Or if they did find him,
- Nothing they saw was compelling enough to make them pick up the phone.
We got this problem out of the way. Here’s how.
We targeted his Google Ads to homeowners already searching for kitchen and basement remodelers in their area. Meanwhile, Facebook campaigns are building momentum and keeping Renewal Solutions in front of the right people.
A new website that didn’t just exist, it converted. Clear next steps. Real project photos. A voice that sounded like Thomas, not like every other generic contractor site.
Every channel fed one pipeline. Every lead tracked. Every dollar is made accountable.
The silence stopped. Consistent, high-quality leads started coming in.
Not in bursts followed by dry spells, but steadily, month after month. The phone that used to go quiet finally started ringing like it remembered what it was for.
Turning Point #3: From Budget Shoppers to High-Ticket Homeowners
For a long time, Renewal Solutions marketed itself as budget-friendly.
It made sense at the time. You take the work you can get when you are starting out.
But that positioning follows you. It attracts the clients who flinch at your price, haggle on every line item, and then go find someone cheaper anyway.
Thomas had built a company that was 20-30% more expensive than competitors because he was delivering something 20-30% better. But his brand was attracting penny pinchers who would never appreciate the quality of his work.
This major disconnect was costing him jobs and margins. So we repositioned everything.
We revamped his website, messaging, and targeting to build around the experience Renewal Solutions actually delivers:
- A full team.
- A project manager.
- Three points of contact throughout the job.
- A one-year labor warranty.
- A showroom where homeowners can walk in, see the materials, touch the cabinets, and visualize the finished product before a single wall comes down.
That’s not just a contractor. That’s a premium home transformation company. We made sure every homeowner understood that before they ever picked up the phone.
Eventually, the budget shoppers stopped calling. The right clients started walking in, literally, into the showroom, ready to spend. High-ticket kitchen jobs started leading the pipeline, and Thomas stopped discounting just to close.
When your marketing looks the part, you attract people who can actually afford the part.
Turning Point #4: From Invisible to Dominant in Monmouth County
Thomas knew his market. He knew which towns had the right homeowners and which ones would collapse at the sight of a real price.
But without a targeted strategy, his marketing was reaching everyone. He burned budget on zip codes that would never convert, while high-income neighborhoods he actually wanted weren’t seeing him at all.
We steadied his aim, so he stopped wasting rounds on targets that were never in range.
Raul mapped the county, identified the income zones, and built the entire SEO and ads strategy around the areas that matched Thomas’s ideal client. Middletown. Holmdel. Colts Neck. Marlboro. Neighborhoods where a $50,000 kitchen renovation doesn’t make anyone flinch.
We cut the noise. We tightened the radius. We made sure every dollar Thomas spent on marketing was pointed directly at homeowners who had the money, the home, and the intention to hire.
Same market. Smarter targeting. Better clients.
That’s what happens when you stop spraying and start aiming properly.
Turning Point #5: From Owner-as-Bottleneck to an Actual Leadership Team
Thomas was everywhere: in production, scheduling, on job sites, and in the office. On top of all of it, he was still running fire shifts in New York City.
He had a business with real infrastructure, trucks, crew, and a showroom, but he was still the one holding every moving piece together.
That’s not owning a business. That’s being owned by it.
The ceiling wasn’t the market. It wasn’t the competition, or even the marketing. The ceiling was Thomas. Not because he wasn’t capable, but because no business can grow beyond what one person can hold together.
When the phone started ringing consistently and revenue became something he could plan around, hiring stopped feeling like a risk and became the obvious next move.
Thomas took the leap.
A new business development manager. A new project manager. An office manager. All onboarded within the same year.
He also invested in EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) and brought in an implementer to start building the structure the business needed to run without him standing in the center.
For the first time, Renewal Solutions has a leadership team. And Thomas could finally do what every owner at his level eventually has to do: stop running the business and start building it.
This Is Where Stagnation Ends, and Market Domination Begins
Here’s the truth: most remodelers doing $2M, $3M, even $4M a year are one bad quarter away from going backwards.
This is not because they’re bad at their craft.
Thomas wasn’t bad at his craft. He was exceptional at it. Six trucks, a showroom, and nine in-house crew. A reputation built over years of showing up and doing the work right.
And he still spent $2.1M to make $2.2M.
Talent without a system doesn’t scale. It just survives. And surviving isn’t why you left a steady paycheck to build something of your own.
Most remodelers get stuck because they keep betting on referrals, hoping the phone will ring, and paying agencies $900/month to do nothing. That’s not a growth strategy. That’s a slow bleed dressed up as patience.
We don’t work with contractors who want to wait and see.
If you’re happy coasting at the same revenue number you hit two years ago, close this page. We’re not for you.
But if you’re:
- Done breaking even on jobs you worked too hard to close
- Tired of feeding a marketing budget that can't tell you where a single lead came from
- Ready to stop being the ceiling of your own business
- We'll build you into the remodeler that high-income homeowners in your market trust with their $50,000 kitchens and $80,000 additions.
- We'll make your pipeline consistent enough that hiring your next project manager feels like an obvious move, not a gamble.
- We'll give you the brand, the system, and the lead flow that turns a good contracting company into the name that owns its market.
Thomas didn’t get lucky. He had the guts to stop doing what wasn’t working and bet on something that did.
He’s still running fire shifts. Still showing up. And now, he’s got a business that thrives whether he’s in the office or in a burning building.
Take Control Over your Lead Sources, Intake & Ad Spend
“Spend the money. It’ll change your life. You’ll look back in six months and be like, that was a no-brainer.”
Carter Oyler – Owner of Decks On Point
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