Jason Arthur
ORLANDO, FLORIDA
Runs the shops. Hiring, training, dispatch, and whether the work gets done right.
You don't have to sell to private equity.
There's a third option, and hardly anybody is talking about it. Mantle buys independent and family-owned heating and air, plumbing, and electrical companies across the Southeast. We're not a fund and we're not a franchise. Nobody behind us is waiting on a sale, so we can hold a company as long as it's run right — which is what we intend to do. Your customers keep the same number and the same treatment. And the person running your company lives in the same town they do.
The alternative to selling out — and the alternative to buying in.
IF YOU OWN ONE
You've spent thirty years building it. You're not handing it to private equity.
We buy your company, look after your customers and your crew, and put somebody who lives here in charge of it — with a real answer to what happens after the check clears.
Read what we commit to →IF YOU WANT TO RUN ONE
You could run a great shop in your town. Buying one is the part that has never added up.
We provide the capital and the back office. You provide the trade, the town, and the standard — and you own a real piece of it.
Read how that works →WHO WE ARE
Two guys who grew up around the trades, buying companies from people who did the same.
Not a fund. Not an investment committee. When you call, one of us picks up, and one of us is sitting across the table when you decide.
Danny Peavey
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Runs the growth. Sales, marketing, brand, and the conversations with owners.
We both came up around a family-owned HVAC business. For years we've run ServiceTitan back offices for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors — business coaching, P&L reviews, system buildouts — and we built Home Service Scorecard, which helps those same shops know their numbers. We're both fathers, and we're doing this to hand our kids something real, which is the same thing most of the owners we sit down with want.
WHAT WE ALL BELIEVE
Everybody who works with Mantle believes the same handful of things.
The owners we buy from, the operators who run our shops, and the two of us. If you don't believe these, we're probably not for each other — and that's fine.
- A good company should stay local, and the person running it should live there.
- Money earned in a town ought to stay in that town.
- Employees deserve good jobs, close to home, working for people who know their name.
- Customers shouldn't pay more because somebody's investors are on a clock, or because a franchise is taking a cut off the top.
- An owner should have a flexible way to sell, and a real way to pass something down.
- The work should be done right.
A fund doesn't care about your town. Neither does a franchisor. You do. So do we.
IF YOU OWN ONESelling without selling out
WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR
The list of people who'll buy a company like yours is shorter than you think.
If you're big enough for a fund to be interested — call it ten trucks, with real money coming off maintenance agreements — then you've had the calls, and you could take one. Some of them pay well. If you're under that, they aren't calling at all, and the people who are calling are brokers who'll shop you to whoever picks up. One truck or fifteen, it doesn't matter to us. But if you think in generations, three questions won't leave you alone.
QUESTION ONE
How does this business stay in my family?
Maybe not the way you pictured it. But there's a version where your name and your customers keep going, you keep a piece of what comes next, and your kids share in it without having to run it. That's a real answer, and it's more than most buyers will give you.
QUESTION TWO
How does my town keep getting good service at a good price?
Somebody who lives there sets the prices, and has to look your neighbors in the eye at the ballfield. That isn't a policy we wrote down. It's just who ends up sitting in the chair.
QUESTION THREE
How do the employees who bled for me share in the upside — and not lose their job or hate the new one?
If the right one is already on your payroll, he gets a shot at the owner's chair with real ownership in it. We'll fund the purchase and he earns his piece. Everybody else keeps their pay, their truck, and their schedule. Our math never starts with a list of people to let go.
A bold generation of faith-filled trade owners is choosing legacy over the exit. That's who we built this for.
BEFORE YOU SELL ANYTHING
Most owners thinking about a sale don't need private equity. They need help.
Needing to fix your company shouldn't mean handing decades of work to an out-of-town firm that takes the business away from your family, raises prices on your neighbors, cuts corners on the work, and lets your people go — all on the hope that you actually get paid the number they promised you.
So tell us what's actually broken. If it's the office, the pricing, the books, or the plain fact that you're still doing all of it yourself at your age, that's fixable — and selling decades of work is an expensive way to fix it. Sometimes the answer is that we buy you. Sometimes the answer is that you don't need a buyer at all, and we'll say so.
THE HONEST COMPARISON
What you've been pitched, and what we're offering instead.
We're not going to pretend private equity is evil and we're saints. Some of those buyers pay well. But their model requires certain things to happen after closing, and you already know what they are.
A FUND OR A ROLLUP
They raised money from investors who were promised a sale in five to seven years. Selling you again isn't a risk. It's the plan.
Prices go up on your neighbors, because the math makes them. You hear about it from people you've known for years.
The profit leaves town, for an investor who has never driven through it.
They borrow against your company to help pay for your company.
Your customers find out something changed when a stranger shows up and the price went up. Nobody prepared them.
Dispatch, pricing, and call scripts move to corporate. Your techs learn what changed on a Monday.
A chunk of your price is an earnout, paid only if the company hits numbers that the new owner — not you — now controls.
A working capital adjustment quietly takes another slice off the wire the day you close.
MANTLE
No fund, and nobody waiting on us to sell by a certain year. We raise money one deal at a time.
Prices get set by somebody who lives here and has to answer for them at the ballgame Saturday.
We grow it by fixing what's leaking — not by squeezing the people who call you.
Profit stays working here — trucks, tools, wages, and the next hire in the same town.
We keep debt low on purpose. A company busy making loan payments can't afford to do right by anybody.
Your customers keep the same number and keep hearing a voice that knows them. Any change gets introduced to them, not sprung on them.
Your crew keeps working the way they work. We bring back office, marketing, and a second set of hands — not a rulebook.
An owner who lives in your town runs it, and we intend to still be answering the phone in five years.
So how does this work for us, if we're not gutting your crew? Most shops your size are leaving money on the table in ways that cost a customer nothing — calls nobody answered, calls nobody returned, work that never got booked. That's the first place we look. Finding it is what we do for a living.
AFTER THE CHECK CLEARS
How we think about the part nobody asks you about.
Every deal gets negotiated on its own, and we're not going to pretend a website can tell you your terms. But you should know what we're after before you spend a morning with us — including what we'd want to change. You'll hear that from us at the table, in plain language, before anything is signed.
ONE
A local owner runs it.
Not a regional manager flying in. An owner-operator who lives in your town, has real ownership in it, and answers to your customers because he runs into them.
TWO
Your customers don't get handed off cold.
Same number, answered by people who know your company. Your listing, your reviews, and the reputation behind them stay live and keep working — that's a large part of what we're buying.
THREE
We don't buy companies to cut people.
Our math never starts with a list of people to let go. If a deal only works by cutting your crew, we got the price wrong, and we'd rather walk away.
FOUR
We're not looking to cut anybody's pay.
Wages, PTO, truck assignments, the way you've handled a bad week for somebody — we want to understand it and keep it, not rebuild it.
FIVE
You leave on your schedule.
Gone in ninety days, or still running the shop three years from now. Some sellers want out. Some want their job back without the paperwork. Both work for us.
SIX
Nobody's clock is running.
There's no fund behind us that promised investors a sale by a certain year. That pressure is what changes a company after it's bought, and we don't have it. What protection you want on that point is something we'd work out together in the agreement itself.
STRUCTURE
You don't have to sell all of it, and you don't have to sell it all at once.
Most owners assume there are two choices: keep running it, or hand over the keys and walk. There are more than two.
- Clean sale
- We buy the whole thing, you help through a transition of whatever length makes sense, and you're done. Simplest version, and sometimes the right one.
- Sell most, keep a piece
- Take real money now and keep a share of what comes next. You stop carrying the risk, and you still own part of what you built — including whatever it's worth years from now.
- A job and a share of the sales
- Stay on payroll at a salary you name, plus a cut of sales for a set number of years, paid every quarter. Some owners run it six more months and then just collect the check. Some stay for years.
- Paid on what you built
- A cut of the work that comes off your customer list and your phone number, for a set number of years. You get paid on the thing you actually built — the people who call you first.
- We take on what you owe
- Truck notes, equipment loans, a seller note from when you bought in. Clearing what you owe is often worth more to you than the same money handed over at closing.
- Seller financing
- Part of the price paid out over time, on terms set up front. Usually gets you a better total, and it keeps us honest with you after closing.
- Your lead tech takes the owner's seat
- If the right operator is already on your payroll, say so. We fund the purchase and put him in the owner's chair with equity he earns. You get paid; he gets what you got at his age.
THE BRIDGE
Every seller's hardest question is a person. We spend our time finding those people.
"Who's actually going to run it on Monday?" is the question that kills most sales to outside buyers. Our answer isn't a job posting. It's a person who wants to own a shop in your town and has been waiting for a way in.
ONE SIDE
Owners with something worth keeping
Years of reputation, a crew that trusts them, and nobody they'd be willing to sell to.
MANTLE IS THE BRIDGE
OTHER SIDE
Talented people with everything but the money
The trade, the work ethic, the town — and no way to buy a business that already works.
IF YOU WANT TO RUN ONEOwning without buying in
WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR
You already know how to run it. That was never the problem.
You've been the service manager, the lead installer, the guy everybody calls when it's bad. You've done the math on going out on your own, and it comes out the same way every time.
What you want is your own shop. What's in the way is that buying a company takes money you don't have, and a franchise takes money you'd rather not hand over. You don't need either one. You need a great brand, a playbook that already works, and partners who are in it with you.
There are two ways in: take over a company we buy, or open a new one under our brand in a town we want to be in. Either way you're running it and you own a piece of it.
01
You're done working for somebody else.
Not because you're difficult. Because you've been running it for them for years and watching somebody else own it.
02
You want a real piece of the pie.
Not a bonus plan. Not a title. Ownership, with your name on the paperwork.
03
You looked hard at a franchise and it didn't sit right.
You couldn't get past what it costs to get in, what it costs every month after, and the fact that at the end of it you still don't own the thing.
04
You want a brand worth running, in your town.
Somewhere you already live. Where the reputation you build is yours and you'll still be there in fifteen years to enjoy it.
THE IDEA
All the good parts of a franchise. None of the bad ones.
You get handed everything a franchise promises — the brand, the playbook, the office side, the buying power. What you don't get is the bill for permission to use it, or the part at the end where you find out you never owned anything.
WHAT A FRANCHISE CHARGES YOU FOR
A big fee just to get in the door, on top of a startup bill that runs into six figures.
Royalties and ad fees on your sales — owed in full in the months you don't make money.
Paying all that and still hiring your own office staff and renting a big building.
Never really owning it. You hold a license, on their terms.
Hard to sell when you want out, with a transfer fee for the privilege.
Selling one location, by yourself, for what one location is worth.
Their rules: approved suppliers, required remodels, their pricing, their software, a non-compete.
A franchisor with no money in your shop. You struggle, they still get paid.
WHAT WE HAND YOU
A brand and a look already built for you, with real marketing behind it. You're not inventing a name or a logo in your kitchen.
The playbook: pricing, training, scripts, and software that already work. Not theory — what we run in our own shops.
Vendor pricing negotiated across every company we own, not just yours.
An office side you don't have to build: books, payroll, dispatch, hiring.
Real ownership in the company you run, not a license to use a name.
Our money in your shop alongside yours. If it has a bad year, we feel it too.
You run your town — the crew, the schedule, the standard of the work.
Owners share in what the business is worth down the road. That's the point of owning a piece instead of renting a name.
A franchise sells you permission to use a name. We're handing you a company to run — and a real piece of the ownership in it.
HOW IT WORKS
Plainly.
The numbers depend on the company, the market, and what you bring — so we're not going to print them on a website and pretend otherwise. Here's the shape of it.
WE
Buy the company.
We find it, check it out, and pay for it. Getting a seat doesn't come down to whether you qualify for a bank loan.
YOU
Put in real money.
Real money, so you're in it the way an owner is. It goes into the business, not to us for the right to use a name.
YOU
Run it, day to day.
The crew, the schedule, the work. You live there, so you're the one answering for it.
WE
Carry the office side.
Books, payroll, dispatch, software, marketing, hiring help — instead of you hiring and paying for each piece on your own.
YOU
Own a real piece.
Ownership you earn over time, with a written way to value your share from the day you start.
BOTH
Have skin in it.
We own the rest, so it's our money on the line in your town too. And it's all in an operating agreement you read before you work a day.
If any of this sounds like you, we'd rather hear from you early than late.
Call or text Danny404-732-6169
Email usdanny@mantlecompanies.com
HOW THIS STARTS
Nothing you tell us goes anywhere.
FIRST — A CONVERSATION
Coffee, and no paperwork.
If you're selling: how you got started, what you're proud of, what's worrying you about stepping back. If you want to run one: what you've run, what you'd do differently, where you'd want to do it. If it's not a fit we'll say so in the first hour.
THEN — A REAL NUMBER
We look at the books under NDA.
Two or three years of P&Ls and tax returns. We come back with a range and how we got there. We don't shop your company around, and what you show us stays with the few people actually working on your deal.
THEN — YOUR TERMS
We build the deal around your answer.
How long you want to stay, what happens to your people, what your family ends up with, who takes the owner's seat. The structure follows from that, not the other way around.
THE NAME
Why we're called Mantle.
A mantle is a covering. It's also the thing that gets handed from one person to the next when the first one's work is done. Both meanings are the job. Cover the people who depend on the company. Carry it forward instead of cashing it in.
Between us we've spent years inside HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies — the back office, the numbers, the crews. We've seen a lot of these books. We know what a well-run shop looks like, and we know the difference between a slow year and a real problem.
Mantle is how we're buying and holding these companies ourselves. We're early, and we'd rather say that than pretend otherwise. We're building deliberately, one company at a time, with money lined up per deal and owners who intend to stay put. If you want to talk to somebody who's already sold to us, ask, and we'll tell you honestly where we are.
— Jason Arthur & Danny Peavey
Mantle Companies · Proudly located in the Southeast United StatesSTART A CONVERSATION
Call or email. It comes straight to one of us.
If you'd rather just ask a question than talk about selling — or about running one — do that. Plenty of people we talk to are five years out. That's fine. We'd rather know you now.