ToolHut Trade School
Every course, and what is in it
This is the business side of the trade — what an hour costs, what to charge, how to get paid, when to hire. Written for people who already know the work.
Start at one and work down. Course 1 assumes you know nothing about running a business; by the last one you have employees, systems and money that behaves. The six headings are chapters, not choices — the numbers are the path.
Go Out On Your Own
The leap, the legal setup, the shape of a real company, and the first ten jobs.
The Leap
Going out on your own is a business decision and a personal one. Here are both, with the arithmetic.
4 lessons · 1 free to read 2Legal Day One
The company exists on paper before it exists on a jobsite. The sequence, in order, with the questions to ask your state.
5 lessons 3Set Up the Business
A business is boxes, not a person. Draw them on day one, even though every box says your name.
3 lessons 4The First Ten Jobs
Work finds a new company through people who already know the work. Ads come later; these ten come first.
4 lessonsFoundations
What an hour costs, what to charge, how to win the work and get paid for it.
Price It Right
Why the busiest truck in town can still go broke — and the arithmetic that fixes it.
5 lessons · 1 free to read 6Get Paid
The work is done. Here is how the money actually arrives — quotes chased, invoices paid, deposits asked for.
4 lessons 7Cash Flow
Money through the seasons: pay yourself on schedule, tax money that was never yours, and a floor under slow months.
3 lessons · 1 free to read 8Win the Work
Reviews, repeat customers, and an owner's week that runs the business instead of being run by it.
3 lessons 9The Site Visit
The walk-through is a performance with a structure — and the quote it produces wins or loses before it's priced.
3 lessonsRun the Day
Job costing, the schedule, and the paperwork that protects you.
Paper That Protects You
Quotes into contracts, changes in writing, photos as records — the paperwork that keeps the money yours.
3 lessons · 1 free to read 11Did That Job Make Money?
Job costing without a bookkeeping degree: estimate against actual, track it while it happens, and let the losers fix your prices.
3 lessons 12The Schedule Is the Business
Get the calendar out of your head, run the week on purpose, and cut the no-shows — so the day runs you a little less.
3 lessonsGrow
Bigger work, the GC relationship, the first hire, truck to company.
Bigger Work
Bidding, GCs, retainage — the different rules of jobs with more zeroes.
3 lessons · 1 free to read 14Marketing That Isn't Ads
The lowest-cost growth in the trades: the finished job, the customers you already have, and being findable where people already look.
3 lessons 15The First Hire
Going from doing the work to leading it: hire from real demand, avoid the classification trap, and delegate with an SOP instead of drowning.
3 lessons 16Character Over Skill
You can teach a man to run a machine. You cannot teach him to show up, own a mistake, or treat the customer's lawn like his mother's. How to find out which one you are hiring — before payroll starts.
4 lessons · 1 free to read 17Growth Levers
A trade business can only be short of four things: hours, capacity, demand, or margin. Usually one of them is what's holding you back and the other three are not. How to find out which, what each one really costs to fix, and why the machine is almost never the right first purchase.
3 lessonsThe Owner
The person the business is built on: your body, your words, your habits, your hours.
Blue Collar Wealth
Pay yourself right, cash flow through the seasons, and wealth off the truck.
Pay Yourself Right
A real wage plus profit, paid on a schedule from money sorted by purpose — so the business supports the owner it is built on.
3 lessons 20Wealth Off the Truck
Turning years on the tools into something that outlasts your back: assets outside the business, and a business that could run — or sell — without you.
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