From Technician to a Multi-Million Home-Services Empire

Welcome to Unbankable, the podcast for entrepreneurs who don’t take no for an answer. I’m Alex Shvarts, CEO and founder of FundKite, a revenue-based funding company. I started this podcast to give small-business entrepreneurs ideas and tips on how to grow faster. I invite CEOs, leaders and business people to share what we’ve learned, including our mistakes and failures, so you can reach the finish line faster.

Today I’m joined by Sardor Umrdinov, a serial entrepreneur who turned a simple appliance-repair business into Home Alliance, a multi-million-dollar home-services company. What makes him special is that he also teaches others to replicate his success through Home Alliance Academy, building business builders from technician to CEO.

I opened by challenging him: why run an academy instead of just building a bigger company? Sardor explained that he has scaled his core company enough that it runs without his daily involvement, so he diversifies his energy into a venture studio and into teaching. Teaching others to build and run on the same systems makes it easier to later merge those companies, which is where real scale and higher valuations come from.

Home Alliance is a marketplace for home services, like AAA or Amazon Prime for the home, covering appliance repair, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, air-duct cleaning, handyman, cleaning and painting. The model includes a subscription: once they’re in your home, customers can get discounts and ongoing maintenance, with a service call fee for non-members. It operates nationwide in major metros.

I agreed the subscription idea is brilliant, especially for something like a broken AC in Miami, where desperate homeowners often get overcharged. A cost-effective maintenance plan gives peace of mind. Sardor said his journey was an evolution: he moved to the US in 2003 as a student, worked every kind of job, from dishwasher to mover to painter to technician, and eventually got into the trade fixing commercial laundry machines.

I shared my own immigrant story: I came at age eight, worked weekends with my dad at a flea market from nine years old, and did every job, busboy, waiter, whatever it took. That hardworking foundation shaped both of us. Sardor added appliance repair first, then HVAC, then plumbing, expanding because customers kept asking if he could do everything.

On what happens when a founder steps back: with the right CEO or COO you can step out, but entrepreneurs get bored, which is why Sardor runs a venture studio launching new companies, with maybe a 30-40% success rate. I added: there are no losers, only quitters. It’s okay to fail, just learn from it, get back up, and be honest that you’ve failed before. Entrepreneurs are problem solvers who see a problem and build a solution.

Sardor divides his week into four focuses, each about 25%: running the core business as CEO, the venture studio building new companies, mergers and acquisitions, and capital raising or strategic work. I framed the rest of the conversation around three plans every small business needs: the Staffing plan, the Growth plan, and the Funding plan.

On staffing, my rule is: pace your hires, accelerate your fires. Sardor’s first hire was a call-center agent he met by chance, hired on the spot, and who still works with him ten years later. Now, for one role they may get over 100 candidates who go through assessments and group interviews; he only personally interviews his direct reports and one level below.

I interview differently because we’re in finance and there’s pressure. I ask questions to see how people react and whether they’re honest, like asking what the biggest exaggeration on their resume is. People dress up resumes; I want to know your real strengths up front and whether you fit the role. Customer service is half of success today, so personality matters as much as skill.

On firing: always give people a chance unless they’ve broken company values or are doing damage. Sardor admitted he once fired someone incorrectly, had to settle, and then became too slow to fire, which hurt the company. The lesson: it’s all about communication; you can let someone go the right way without burning bridges. My tip: if someone isn’t performing, replace them, and if someone is performing, make them very happy. Don’t wait too long, it won’t get better.

We discussed the hostage situation: an employee who says ‘I got a better offer, pay me more.’ Sardor looks at the P&L and whether he can replace the role, and keeps backups ready. We agreed it’s better when someone simply asks for a raise than holds a competing offer over you. Sardor shared a mistake: rather than training a proper new hire, he lazily brought back former employees, which damaged the culture.

On funding for someone with zero connections: Sardor came with $800 and started his first business with $100. His advice for a small owner who needs to grow: form an LLC or corporate entity, operate it a year or two so you can qualify for a real business loan rather than borrowing personally, and only borrow against a solid business plan you believe you can repay at a good return. Sometimes money is too expensive; he recently took $3M of VC at 13% and found SBA money to be a good deal on one project.

How do you know when to get outside money? Sardor gave an example: doing government-backed utility upgrades where the client pays in 90 days. On an accrual basis he’s negative, but if he has a signed contract and is confident he’ll be paid in three to four months, it makes sense to borrow to finance the labor and parts. The key is certainty of repayment.

On the growth plan: many entrepreneurs are dreamers who start at the finish line, spending the imagined $100 million without a plan, which gets messy. Sardor’s first rule: check your P&L and make sure the model actually works, because scaling an unhealthy business just scales the problem and creates cash issues. We broke down COGS (cost of goods sold), labor, gross profit, merchant fees, sales and marketing cost, and operating expenses.

We used a thought experiment, Jack the fisherman in Anchorage with three boats and growing demand, deciding whether to buy a big new boat. I said buy; Sardor said lease or rent to minimize risk and prove the demand first, then purchase later. I added a third option: buy the surplus catch from other fishermen. The point: there’s a solution to every growth problem, and you have to look for the different ways to approach it.

On systems: in the growth stage, document everything with SOPs (standard operating procedures). Sardor’s tip: every weekend when everyone leaves, document one process; in a year you have 52 SOPs, enough to run a company. He learned this the hard way, in 2012 he left for a month, an employee took over his contracts, and with no documented SOPs or backups he lost half his business.

I shared our ‘1-3-1’ rule: when a team member brings a problem, they bring three suggested solutions and a recommendation. Writing it out often solves the problem before they reach me, and it makes people own decisions and grow. We delegate decision authority in layers, with different spending limits at each level.

My closing lesson came from my father, an engineer: ‘measure seven times, cut once.’ As entrepreneurs we rarely have the patience to measure seven times; the first measure is impulse. I regret the times I measured twice instead of seven. Sardor’s parallel lesson was the value of SOPs and backups learned from losing half his business.

We closed on gratitude, two immigrants who built multi-million-dollar businesses from nothing in a country of opportunity, and the belief that anyone willing to learn the steps, plan, and keep going can achieve their dream. That’s what Unbankable is about.