He Went From Prison to a $15 Million Electrical Company in Five Years

Electrical Work Was Around Him From the Beginning

Shane did not grow up completely disconnected from the trades.

Electrical work was part of his family.

His father was an electrician, and Shane grew up around the industry. But knowing a trade exists and deciding to build your life around it are two very different things.

As a young man, Shane went in another direction.

Shane says he was selling drugs at 18 and was in prison by the time he was 20. He has described that period as one of the lowest points of his life.

Then another major disruption hit his family.

During the 2008 recession, Shane says his father packed up the family electrical business and moved back to Argentina. Shane was left to figure out his own future.

For a while, he did not seem to have a clear answer.

Getting Out of Prison Did Not Immediately Lead to Success

It is easy to rewrite someone's life after they become successful.

You can look backward and make every decision sound like part of some master plan.

That is not what Shane's story looks like.

After prison, he went to college. Then he tried different ways to make money.

Some worked for a while.

Some did not.

Shane tried a used car dealership, a cinnamon roll business, drove a dump truck, and experimented with other businesses before eventually finding his way back to the trade he had grown up around.

There was no straight line from prison to $15 million.

There were years of trying things that went nowhere.

That matters because many business stories make entrepreneurship sound like someone simply discovers the perfect idea and starts scaling.

Shane did not find the perfect idea.

He kept trying until one finally started making sense.

Then He Started Picking Up Work on TaskRabbit

The turning point did not begin with a big investor or an expensive office.

It started much smaller.

Shane began working as a handyman through TaskRabbit.

The platform connected him with homeowners who needed work completed around their properties. As the jobs came in, he started seeing something familiar.

Electrical work.

The trade he had been around growing up was still there.

And unlike some of the other businesses Shane had tried, this was something he already understood.

This period became the point where Shane began moving from general handyman work back toward electrical service. Eventually, he obtained his electrical contractor's license and began turning the work into a real electrical company.

Ampere Electric was born.

But it did not look anything like the company it would become a few years later.

The First Full Year Was About $700,000

Ampere Electric's first full year produced roughly $700,000 in revenue.

For a small electrical business, that was a legitimate start.

But Shane was already thinking beyond being one electrician with a truck.

That created the first major challenge.

The business could only grow so far if every call, every job, and every customer still depended on him.

Shane needed another electrician.

Then another truck.

Then somebody who could handle work while Shane focused on growing the company.

He has described that first hire as one of the moments where Ampere started becoming something that could scale rather than simply providing Shane with a job.

That change sounds obvious after the fact.

It is much harder when you are the owner.

Hiring means payroll before you know exactly how much additional revenue that person will create.

And now another person's livelihood depends on your ability to keep the schedule full.

Shane kept hiring anyway.

Then He Ran Into a Problem Almost Every Contractor Eventually Faces

Getting technically good electricians was not enough.

Ampere was growing, but every new person added another layer of complexity.

Who would manage them?

Who would train them?

Who would answer questions when Shane was busy?

Who would make sure customers received the same experience from different technicians?

According to Shane, hiring managers became critical once Ampere moved past roughly $2 million in revenue.

That was one of the moments where the business began changing from a collection of electricians into an organization.

The owner could no longer personally supervise everything.

The company needed structure.

And as Ampere got bigger, another growth engine started becoming impossible to ignore.

Google Reviews Became One of Ampere's Biggest Advantages

Shane became obsessed with reviews.

Not because reviews looked nice on a profile, but because homeowners were seeing them before Ampere ever arrived at the house.

When someone searches for an electrician in Las Vegas, they do not only see company names.

And a homeowner may begin deciding who they trust before anyone answers the phone.

Shane realized that if Ampere could become one of the most reviewed electricians in the market, that trust could start before the technician pulled into the driveway.

Shane identifies Google reviews as one of the biggest factors behind Ampere's growth.

That strategy became visible at scale.

By 2026, Ampere Electric had more than 3,000 Google reviews and a 4.9 rating.

That is not something a competitor can duplicate overnight.

An electrician can buy another truck tomorrow.

They can launch a new website.

They can increase their Google Ads budget.

They cannot instantly create thousands of positive customer experiences.

Shane Wanted the Company to Look Bigger Before It Was Bigger

Another part of Ampere's strategy was branding.

Shane has talked about intentionally presenting the business professionally even when it was much smaller than it is today.

That meant branded trucks.

A recognizable company.

Consistent presentation.

A business that looked established when homeowners saw it in the neighborhood.

The idea was simple.

If Ampere wanted to become one of the major electrical service companies in Las Vegas, it needed to start behaving like one before the revenue fully caught up.

That did not mean pretending to be something the company was not.

It meant reinvesting in the image and infrastructure of the business instead of taking every dollar out of it.

And Shane kept reinvesting.

Instead of Treating the Business Like an ATM, He Bought More Trucks

One of the strongest themes in Shane's story is what he did with the money Ampere generated.

Shane says Ampere expanded to around 40 trucks without outside money, largely by reinvesting profits rather than treating the company like a personal bank account.

That decision slowed down the amount of money Shane could personally take from the company in the short term.

But it increased the size of the asset he was building.

One truck could generate a certain amount of revenue.

Forty trucks could create something completely different.

The same principle applied to marketing.

Marketing Became a Serious Part of the Company

Ampere did not grow through one advertising channel.

Shane has discussed using Google Local Services Ads, PPC, SEO, Yelp, branding, billboards, radio, and referral relationships with other home service companies.

That mix is important because the company was no longer trying to generate enough work for one electrician.

It needed enough demand to support dozens of trucks.

That changes the marketing problem completely.

A small contractor may be satisfied with five or ten additional leads in a month.

A company operating 40 trucks needs a much more consistent pipeline.

Ampere's marketing eventually became a system rather than a single campaign.

But Shane also understood that buying more leads would be pointless if the economics did not work.

He Stopped Pricing Based on What Competitors Charged

Contractors often look around their market and ask one question.

What is everybody else charging?

Shane argues that this is the wrong place to start.

Another company may have completely different labor costs.

Copying a competitor's price without knowing their economics can mean copying their problems too.

Shane says Ampere learned to price based on its actual costs and desired profit, not simply on what another electrician was charging.

That became more important as the company grew.

A small pricing mistake repeated across hundreds or thousands of jobs becomes a very expensive mistake.

A Small Service Call Could Become a Much Bigger Opportunity

Shane also talks openly about sales.

That can be controversial in the trades.

Some technicians hear the word sales and immediately think of pushing customers into work they do not need.

Shane looks at it differently.

If a homeowner calls because one GFCI outlet stopped working, the technician still has an opportunity to evaluate the home's electrical system and identify legitimate problems or improvements the homeowner may not know about.

The original service call may be small, but the homeowner's needs may not be.

Ampere trained technicians to communicate those opportunities rather than simply completing the smallest possible repair and leaving. Shane has also discussed using performance based compensation to reward technicians who produce more value for the company.

That helped increase the amount of revenue the company could generate from the leads it was already paying to acquire.

Finding Enough Electricians Became the Next Bottleneck

By the time Ampere had dozens of trucks, generating leads was no longer the only constraint.

The company needed people capable of running those calls.

And skilled electricians are difficult to recruit.

Shane's answer was not simply to wait for experienced electricians to apply.

Ampere started developing people internally.

Ampere started taking apprentices and creating a path for them to become lead installers and service technicians.

At the same time, Shane wanted Ampere to become the type of place good electricians actually wanted to work.

If Ampere could attract better people and develop its own technicians, it could keep adding trucks instead of waiting for the labor market to solve the problem.

That became essential as the numbers climbed.

From $700,000 to a Business Pacing Toward $15 Million

Ampere's first full year produced roughly $700,000.

Five years later, Shane says the company is pacing toward approximately $15 million in 2026.

That distinction matters.

The company has not publicly released an audited financial statement proving a completed $15 million year.

The $15 million figure represents the company's pace for 2026 rather than a completed audited annual result.

Even with that qualification, the growth is substantial.

Roughly $700,000 to a $15 million pace.

Around 40 trucks.

Thousands of reviews.

A growing team.

Shane says the fleet was built without outside capital.

It is a very different picture from a 20 year old sitting in prison wondering where his life was going.

And Shane Does Not Want to Stop at $15 Million

His next target is even bigger.

Shane has publicly discussed trying to build Ampere into a $30 million electrical business in Las Vegas.

That goal matters because many large home service businesses eventually become multi trade companies.

They add HVAC.

Plumbing.

Electrical.

Shane believes electrical alone has room to become a much larger standalone opportunity.

That means the next phase of Ampere will require more of everything that got the company here.

Because nothing about Shane's story suggests the next stage will happen perfectly either.

The Part of the Story That Is Easy to Miss

The obvious headline is prison to $15 million.

That is what catches your attention.

But it is not really what built the company.

Getting out of prison did not make Shane successful.

Going to college did not make him successful.

Trying a car dealership did not.

The cinnamon roll business did not.

Driving a dump truck did not.

TaskRabbit did not magically turn into a 40 truck electrical company either.

The company grew because Shane eventually found something that worked and then kept building around it.

That is less dramatic than saying someone escaped prison and became a millionaire.

It is also much more useful.