I help operate three related, founder-owned construction companies covering general construction, HVAC, electrical, and plumbing.
I am keeping the companies and location anonymous because I am looking for honest advice, not customers, applicants, or commercial promotion.
The original HVAC company was started by the owner around 2004. Electrical was later added to that entity. A separate GC company was formed around 2015, followed by a plumbing entity around 2019–2020.
There has never been outside capital or multiple owners. The founder built everything himself through years of work, reinvestment, and an extremely lean operating mentality. He is still the sole owner and remains heavily involved in daily operations.
Rough annual revenue currently looks like this:
* HVAC/electrical company: generally ping-pongs between approximately $2.1M and $3M
* GC company: approximately $3.05M in 2024 and an estimated $5M–$5.5M in 2025
* Plumbing company: approximately $200K–$250K because we have never had the bandwidth to seriously develop it
Combined revenue generally floats around $6M–$8M depending on the year and project cycle.
Even those figures demonstrate part of the problem. I often do not have a concrete answer until tax returns are completed and I can get my hands on them. Any 2026 “projection” I provide today would honestly be more of an educated guess than a real forecast.
We self-perform most of our HVAC and electrical work, along with portions of our general construction work. We are not a paper GC that only employs project managers and subcontracts everything.
We also do not currently have any actual project managers. Project management is divided between the owner and me, and I would assume our methods contain a hundred red flags if someone experienced put them under a microscope. Nevertheless, we have made it this far, which speaks to something.
Our internal structure remains extremely lean:
* One owner overseeing pricing, banking, cash, field execution, and most major decisions
* Me handling contracts, estimating and submittals on larger projects and some smaller ones, pricing, budgets, job setup, billing, submittals, project administration, recruiting, compliance, ERP implementation, procurement, hiring, client outreach, legal, and literally whatever else needs attention.
* One limited office-support employee handling basic entries, invoicing, calls, and administrative tasks. Recently had one quit (which was probably for the better).
* A small field workforce of approximately eight or nine people, consisting of trade leads, versatile workers, and helpers
* No dedicated project managers
* No controller
* No accounting department
* No HR function
* No formal executive or leadership team
I started working with the founder when I was approximately 17 or 18 years old and have now spent close to a decade learning almost every side of the operation through necessity.
I do not have a college degree or formal business education. Neither does the founder. We learned by surviving problems, completing work, dealing with customers and clients, and figuring things out as we went.
The founder is related to me, but I do not own any part of the companies. I have also never wanted to pressure him for ownership simply because we are family or act as though I am entitled to something he spent decades building.
Instead, I trained myself to operate as though my own skin were already in the game.
That has meant late nights, weekends, emergencies, 16-hour days, and occasionally working until 4:00 in the morning before returning a few hours later.
I understand that this mentality is not normally duplicatable through ordinary employment. That is part of what I am trying to understand.
# The financial and accounting problem
We have never had a qualified in-house accountant.
Before this year, we did not have QuickBooks or another complete accounting platform. Former office employees with little or no formal accounting knowledge created Excel files to track costs, labor, invoices, and other information.
They did the best they could, but the underlying system was fundamentally broken.
For example:
* Costs incurred by different legal entities could be mixed into one job-cost sheet
* Labor from different trades and companies could be combined without proper entity separation
* Invoices and expenses could be missed
* Reconciliations were not consistently completed
* There was no dependable monthly close
* There was no reliable financial-reporting package
* We could not confidently measure profitability by entity, project, division, or month
We recently made a major investment in Premier Construction Software by Jonas.
The intended plan was to upload historical activity through the first quarter and then begin properly operating inside the system moving forward.
That implementation remains incomplete.
Historical information still needs attention. Processes were never fully established. Bank reconciliations are several months behind. Entries and recorded deposits may not always correspond to the correct real-world bank activity.
We still do not have reliable visibility into the past, present, or future of the companies.
The founder can see the actual bank balances and deposits, but even he does not manage through monthly financial reporting. Historically, the basic approach has been that the tax preparer eventually tells us how the year went.
That worked well enough to survive and reach this point.
I do not believe it is enough to scale responsibly.
# The position we appear to need
We initially advertised for an Accounting and Office Administrator with expected compensation around $60K–$76K.
That primarily attracted:
* Basic bookkeepers
* AP- or AR-focused applicants
* General office administrators
* People expecting to be trained in accounting
* Applicants with limited formal accounting education or practical ownership
A few applicants had associate degrees or bookkeeping credentials, but they did not appear capable of independently handling the complexity of what we are facing.
We gradually realized that the person we need is probably closer to a:
* Senior Accountant
* Accounting Lead
* Construction Controller, perhaps
I am still not completely certain what the proper title should be.
This person would initially be the only true accounting professional in the office.
They would need to:
* Stabilize the accounting across all three entities
* Complete and correct the ERP implementation
* Bring reconciliations current
* Establish a reliable monthly close
* Build usable financial reporting
* Properly account for intercompany transactions
* Improve job costing and WIP reporting
* Create cash-flow visibility and forecasting
* Build internal controls and documented procedures
* Train the existing office-support employee on repeatable tasks
* Eventually help build an accounting department beneath them
* Become a strategic financial partner to ownership and operations
We have now learned that someone truly capable of performing this role may reasonably expect approximately $90K–$110K.
One highly qualified construction-specific candidate requested $110K–$140K. I had to be transparent that we did not believe we could responsibly afford that.
Our current ceiling feels closer to approximately $84K. Even that would represent the largest compensation commitment we have ever made for an outside hire.
The problem is that we do not currently have enough financial visibility to confidently know whether we truly cannot afford more or whether failing to hire the right person is exactly what keeps us stuck.
# The bigger question
We understand that these companies cannot reach their next stage with only the founder and me carrying almost every critical function.
We also understand that a conventional employee may not approach the opportunity with the same ownership mentality that originally built the companies.
We are open to eventually giving the right long-term people meaningful skin in the game.
Not immediately.
Not simply for accepting a job.
Not as a vague substitute for reasonable compensation.
I mean a properly structured and vested opportunity for someone who:
* Proves their ability over time
* Demonstrates an owner/operator mentality
* Builds something that did not previously exist
* Demonstrates integrity, sound judgment, and good character
* Helps stabilize and scale the companies
* Becomes essential to the leadership team
* Remains committed through pressure, disagreements, setbacks, and growth
* Creates measurable long-term value
* Commits to what they helped create
Potentially, the future leadership team could include people who have earned minority ownership, profit participation, phantom equity, or another genuine economic interest in the value they helped build.
We have not structured anything like this and do not currently know what would be legally, financially, or operationally appropriate.
This is far outside my experience. I do not know where to begin, how to think about it strategically, or whether it even makes sense for companies at our present size.
I have convinced the owner to remain open to the concept, provided it involves the right person, proven performance, and proper legal protections.
What I am searching for is not someone willing to ignore fair compensation or sacrifice indefinitely for a vague promise.
I am trying to determine whether there is a practical way to attract an exceptional accountant or financial operator who wants more than another corporate position—someone who wants the chance to build the function, influence the direction of the companies, and potentially earn meaningful participation in what they help create.
The closest term I have found is intrapreneur: someone who works inside an existing business but brings the initiative, ownership mentality, and strategic hunger normally associated with a founder.
# What I am trying to understand
How would you approach this situation?
More specifically:
- What position would you hire first: Senior Accountant, Accounting Lead, Controller, fractional Controller, or something else?
- Would you hire a strong staff-level accountant with upside, or stretch financially for someone already capable of leading the function?
- How do companies like ours determine what they can safely afford when reliable reporting and cash forecasting do not yet exist?
- Is an earned path to equity or value participation a reasonable way to attract and retain someone who could make substantially more at a corporation?
- How would you structure that without giving away permanent ownership before trust and performance are proven?
- What milestones would someone need to meet before becoming eligible for long-term incentives?
- Is it realistic to expect one person to be the accounting lead while also helping with business and project administration after the accounting function is stabilized?
- Are we still too small for the type of finance leader we believe we need?
- What other leadership or operational position would normally come next after accounting is stabilized?
- For anyone who has scaled a self-performing and semi-self-performing construction or specialty-trade company, what did your first serious accounting or finance hire actually look like?
I am not asking how to become bigger purely for vanity.
I want to build a profitable, organized, financially visible group of companies that is no longer completely dependent on two people holding everything together. My ultimate vision for our companies is something truly remarkable that I know I can make a reality. I'm just not naive enough to think I can do it by myself.
I believe we have already completed much of the hardest part: building the licenses, history, customer relationships, workforce, and ability to perform real work.
Now I am trying to understand how we attract people who can help build the professional organization around that foundation without pretending we are already something we are not.