+46%
Average job value, before and after the pricing rebuild
50%
Cash flow improvement: deposits collected on every job before work begins
30–50
Problem clients filtered out, by Kyle's own estimate
3–5 weeks
Booked in advance
Before
Unpredictable days, job-to-job income
Kyle Stairs is a Red Seal plumber running KFS Plumbing in Fredericton. By early 2026 he had more work than he could quote properly and less profit to show for it than the work deserved. He was living job to job: each week's income rose or fell with whether the next estimate got approved, and there was no way to see it coming.
Pricing was hourly and applied by feel, with four different rates for the same hour depending on who was asking and what the work was. Materials markup lived in his head, not in the system, so nobody, including Kyle, could say what a job actually earned. Quoting was the quiet cost: a single estimate could swallow four to eight hours of evenings, and by his own account he was doing a little better than breaking even, with no way to prove otherwise because the numbers did not exist.
The Project
Assessment, structure, proof
The engagement was a three-week pricing strategy intensive built on Kyle's real House Call Pro data: every job, quote and invoice he had recorded from the start of 2026 to the June 1 kickoff, close to six months of history to base the assessment on. The assessment found where margin leaked and what the numbers could and could not yet prove. The structure followed: the true hourly recovery rate, a service-call minimum, a materials markup rule, and the walk-away floor on margin, locked in with quote language for the pushback moments and a Decision Summary Kyle could defend without anyone in the room.
The structure was Sage's. The proof was Kyle's. He ran every quote through the framework, collected the deposit on every job, and let the platform measure the results in real time. Weekly numbers showed what was working, and the plan adapted when they did.
The Outcome
Sixty days in, measurable proof
Average job value rose 46 percent within 60 days of the plan going live. Revenue held steady on roughly a third fewer jobs, and that is the whole point: the same money, earned with a third less wear on the owner. Less time quoting, fewer materials runs, fewer low-value calls, and more hours that actually belonged to him.
That trade is what he was really buying. In August it paid off in the currency that matters most: a week in PEI with his family, his first unplugged vacation in more than three years, phone off, no exceptions, no reason to put it off any longer. The deposits also did their quiet work, filtering an estimated 30 to 50 clients who would not have paid or would have caused problems, and clients now wait weeks specifically for Kyle to do their job.
Convinced by the results, Kyle is expanding the engagement in Spring 2027 to take growth to the next phase: the demand side, marketing, and the capacity decisions that follow it.
In His Words
“I still have a ton of people who will wait for me for weeks just specifically so that I come and do the job.”
“The whole deposit thing has probably saved me from at least 30 to 50 bad clients who either wouldn’t have paid or would have caused problems in some aspect.”
“The plans that we have put into place... it has been night and day difference on my end.”
Kyle Stairs
Owner, KFS Plumbing
Where is your pricing actually costing you?
In 4 weeks, you have the definitive answer, not a suggestion: the constraint found, the gap priced in annualized gross profit, and one to three levers, each with an owner, a metric, and a date.
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