He Battled Addiction and Loss. Then He Built a $17 Million HVAC and Plumbing Company

Will Staton was only 13 years old when his mother died from leukemia.

He has described her as the glue that held the family together. Losing her changed the direction of his life, and the years that followed were not easy.

Addiction came next.

By 22, Will says he had reached a point where he had to get his life back on track. Recovery forced him to confront the way he was living, take responsibility for his decisions, and rebuild himself.

Years later, those same lessons would show up again in a very different place.

Inside his family's plumbing company.

Today, Staton Heating, Cooling & Plumbing is described as a $17 million plus residential home service company, with plans to keep growing toward roughly $23 million to $24 million and eventually much higher.

But the interesting part is not the number.

It is how close the business came to going in a completely different direction.

Plumbing Was Already in the Family

Will did not discover the trades by accident.

His father, William L. Staton, started the original plumbing company in Maryland in 1983. Will grew up around the business, idolized his father, spent time on job sites, and eventually joined the company himself. The company's own history says Will took over the day to day operating responsibilities in 2012 so his father could begin stepping away.

At the time, plumbing was the core business.

The company had spent decades building itself largely around new construction. That model could produce revenue, but Will eventually became frustrated with it.

New construction meant relying heavily on builders, schedules, project cycles, and margins that were often outside the company's control.

Will wanted something different.

He wanted direct relationships with homeowners.

He wanted more control over pricing.

He wanted recurring demand.

And eventually, he wanted a company that could grow without depending on the same model his father had built decades earlier.

But changing the business meant risking what was already working.

Before the Business Changed, Will Had to Change

The loss of Will's mother had stayed with him.

In a 2026 episode of To The Point, he spoke openly about how losing her at 13 contributed to the chaos that followed and eventually to addiction. He also described recovery as a process that taught him accountability, humility, discipline, and what he calls extreme ownership.

Those lessons mattered later because running a company gave him endless opportunities to blame someone else.

A bad employee.

A bad market.

A bad marketing campaign.

A technician who missed a number.

A manager who did not perform.

A software system that was difficult to implement.

Will's view gradually became different.

If he owned the company, he had to own the result.

That mindset would become especially important when he made one of the biggest decisions in the company's history.

In 2020, He Walked Away From About $3 Million in Revenue

Most business owners spend years trying to find another $3 million in revenue.

Will intentionally removed it.

In 2020, Staton cut its new construction work entirely, walking away from roughly $3 million in annual revenue. This happened during the uncertainty of COVID, which made the decision even more uncomfortable. That same year, Will's father, then 75, officially stepped away from the business, leaving Will fully responsible for what happened next.

There was no guarantee the strategy would work.

The company was abandoning a large piece of revenue before the replacement growth engine was fully established.

Will wanted to move deeper into residential service.

Then he made the decision even more aggressive.

He added HVAC.

There was one obvious problem.

He did not know HVAC.

He Added HVAC Without Knowing How to Run an HVAC Business

Staton's own history says the company launched its HVAC division in 2021 after recognizing the natural connection between plumbing, heating, and cooling.

From the outside, adding HVAC sounds logical.

The same homeowner who calls you about a water heater may eventually need a furnace.

The same customer who trusts your plumbers may need an air conditioner replaced.

The trucks are already in the neighborhood.

The call center already exists.

The brand already has customers.

But adding another trade is not as simple as adding another service to a website.

Will has been very open about how rough the transition became.

There were pricing mistakes.

Marketing mistakes.

Cash flow problems.

The company was implementing ServiceTitan while simultaneously trying to figure out an entirely new division.

And according to the To The Point episode, HVAC came close to breaking the business.

This was not a smooth expansion story.

Will had taken away millions in existing revenue and replaced it with a trade he barely understood.

Now he had to make it work.

Then HVAC Did About $7 Million in Its First Year

The strange part is that despite the operational problems, demand was clearly there.

According to the 2026 interview, Staton's HVAC division produced approximately $7 million in revenue in its first year.

That number confirmed something important.

Adding HVAC had not been the wrong decision.

The company simply was not yet good enough at operating the new business.

That distinction matters.

Contractors often react to problems by assuming the strategy itself is broken.

Sometimes the opportunity is fine.

The execution is the problem.

Will began digging much deeper into the numbers and the systems behind the company.

He attended industry training, including training with Terry Nicholson, and started paying closer attention to the metrics that actually controlled the business.

Instead of simply asking whether revenue was going up, he began looking at things like closing rates, average tickets, cost per lead, pricing, accountability, and technician performance.

The business became less about instinct and more about knowing what was actually happening.

Revenue Wasn't Enough Anymore

Getting to millions in revenue sounds impressive.

But revenue can hide a lot of problems.

A company can be busy and still have cash flow problems.

It can generate a huge number of calls and still fail to convert enough of them.

It can sell millions of dollars of work at the wrong price.

It can hire quickly and create a management problem bigger than the sales problem it just solved.

Will's experience adding HVAC forced him to confront that reality.

The company began focusing much more heavily on KPIs, pricing discipline, clear expectations, and accountability.

That changed the way he looked at growth.

Instead of just wanting more jobs, he wanted a business where he understood what created those jobs and what happened after the phone rang.

A marketing campaign can make the phone ring.

But somebody still has to answer.

Someone has to book the appointment.

A technician has to show up.

The customer has to trust the recommendation.

The pricing has to make sense.

The job has to be completed correctly.

And the company has to keep enough profit to pay for everything required to generate the next customer.

More leads amplify whatever system already exists.

If the system is good, they can accelerate growth.

If the system is broken, they can accelerate the problems.

Will Also Changed the Way He Hired People

Fast growth created another challenge.

Leadership.

Will has said one of his biggest lessons was learning that getting the right people into leadership roles matters more than simply filling positions.

In the early stages of growth, companies often promote the best technician because they are the best technician.

But being great at repairing plumbing or HVAC equipment does not automatically make someone good at managing people.

Will started becoming more intentional about standards, accountability, expectations, and whether a person genuinely bought into the direction of the company.

That sounds simple.

It is not.

A growing company constantly feels pressure to hire.

The phone is ringing.

Jobs are waiting.

Technicians are overloaded.

The temptation is to fill the seat as quickly as possible.

But the wrong manager can affect an entire department.

The wrong technician can damage the company's reviews.

The wrong salesperson can create promises operations cannot deliver.

Growth makes people more important, not less.

Marketing Became Something the Company Could Not Turn On and Off

Will also changed how he thought about marketing.

One of the lessons highlighted in the episode was consistency.

Contractors often spend money on advertising when they are slow, then pull back when schedules fill up.

It feels logical.

Why keep paying for leads when you already have work?

The problem is that demand does not appear instantly when the company becomes slow again.

Will's approach became much more deliberate: maintain consistent marketing, understand the cost of acquiring customers, and continue capturing market share instead of reacting emotionally to short term scheduling pressure.

That also meant understanding which numbers mattered.

Closing rate.

Average ticket.

Cost per lead.

Marketing performance.

Memberships.

Customer retention.

Those numbers gave the business a way to make decisions based on what was happening rather than how busy everyone felt that week.

The Family Plumbing Company Became a Multi Trade Business

The original company began as a plumbing operation in 1983.

Today, Staton Heating, Cooling & Plumbing serves homeowners across Central Maryland with plumbing, HVAC, sewer, drain, water heater, and related home service work. Its website describes the company as a second generation family owned operation, with Will now leading the business his father started more than four decades ago.

That transformation took years.

It also required Will to change the identity of the company.

This was no longer simply the plumbing business his father built.

It was becoming a residential home services platform.

And by 2026, the company was reported at more than $17 million in annual revenue, with a path toward approximately $23 million to $24 million.

Will's longer term target is even larger.

He has discussed a goal of reaching approximately $40 million in revenue and $8 million in EBITDA over the next five years.

But the Number Wasn't the Most Emotional Part of the Interview

Toward the end of the conversation, the discussion returned to Will's mother.

The person whose death had changed his life when he was 13.

After everything that followed, the addiction, recovery, taking over the family business, walking away from millions in revenue, adding HVAC, nearly breaking the operation, rebuilding the team, and eventually growing past $17 million, Will was asked what he thought his mother would think of the man he had become.

His answer brought the story back to where it started.

He believed she would be proud.

Not simply because the business had grown.

Because of the husband, father, and leader he had become.

That makes the revenue number feel different.

The $17 million company is the visible outcome.

The deeper transformation happened much earlier.

What Contractors Can Learn From Will Staton

There would have been a much easier version of this story.

Will could have inherited the family plumbing company, kept doing what had always worked, and protected the revenue already coming in.

Instead, he eventually decided the model itself needed to change.

He removed roughly $3 million of new construction revenue.

He moved toward residential service.

He entered HVAC without knowing the trade.

That expansion created serious operational and cash flow problems.

Then he learned the numbers, rebuilt leadership, improved accountability, stayed consistent with marketing, and continued growing.

The lesson is not that every plumbing company should immediately add HVAC.

It is that growth sometimes requires letting go of revenue that does not fit the business you are trying to build.

It also requires recognizing the difference between having demand and having a company capable of handling demand profitably.

Google Ads.

SEO.

Facebook.

Direct mail.

Another lead source.

Sometimes it does.

But Will Staton's story shows what happens when the problem moves deeper into the business.

Once enough customers are coming in, the questions change.

Can you convert them?

Can you price the work correctly?

Can you recruit enough good technicians?

Can managers hold people accountable?

Can you maintain the same customer experience as the company grows?

Can you keep generating demand without turning marketing on and off every time the schedule changes?

Those are the systems that turn leads into revenue.

The Bigger Transformation

Will Staton's story started long before HVAC entered the picture.

It started with a 13 year old losing his mother.

Then came years of addiction and chaos.

Then recovery.

Then responsibility.

Eventually, responsibility included the business his father had spent decades building.

Will could not change what happened when he was 13.

He could not undo the years that followed.

But he could decide what he did next.

That same pattern appeared again when the business reached its own turning point.

Staton could remain what it had always been.

Or Will could rebuild it.

He chose the second option.

The company walked away from millions of dollars in existing work, entered an unfamiliar trade, survived serious mistakes, and eventually became a residential HVAC and plumbing company producing more than $17 million a year.

And the business is still growing.

The company may eventually reach $23 million, $40 million, or something beyond that.

But the most interesting part of the story has already happened.

The man leading it is not the same person he was when addiction controlled his life.

And the company is no longer the same plumbing business he inherited.

Both had to change before either one could grow.