Third-Generation Plumber Transformed Family Business

There’s a photo collage on the wall behind Trey McWilliams’ desk. In the middle of it, one word: Why. For McWilliams, the word represents three generations of family sacrifice, a decade of hard-won business transformation, and a bold bet on the future of the home services industry.

McWilliams is the third-generation owner of McWilliams Heating, Cooling and Plumbing, a residential service company based in Lufkin, Texas. He’s also the founder of Blue Cardinal Home Services Group, a private equity-backed platform that acquires and scales HVAC and plumbing companies across the country.

At 40 years old, he employs about 400 employees spanning locations in Texas, Arizona, Kansas City, Birmingham, Alabama, and Augusta, Georgia. He co-owns a home services marketing firm. He’s building a pest control company with his middle sister. And he still finds time to be what he calls his most important job title: being a husband and father.

A Business Built by Three Irvins

The company was launched in 1974, when Irvin “Mac” McWilliams retired from the Navy, relocated to East Texas, and started an air conditioning company. His son — also Irvin, known simply as “Irvin” — joined the business straight out of high school and gradually took over the financial and operational side while Mac stayed in the field. When the third McWilliams — Irvin the third, nicknamed as Trey — hit junior high, he started riding along with his grandfather on service calls. By the time he could drive, he was pulling his weight.

After graduating high school, Trey began running service calls full time. He married his high school sweetheart, started a family, and quickly encountered a realization that would change everything: the business he was part of was a job, not a career. A lifestyle business, he calls it — one that served the family in many ways, but wasn’t built to grow.

“My dad never missed a baseball or football game of mine,” McWilliams says. “But it was going to have a hard time supporting my family, my desires, and his needs.”

After coming to the conclusion “if not me than who?” McWilliams sat down with his dad and made his proposal: “Here’s what we’re going to do, and here’s how we’re going to do it.”

His father’s response surprised him. “He said, ‘Trey, if you’re willing to pay the price and put in the work, I’ll support you.'”

What followed was three years of intense transformation. The company shed its commercial and plan-and-spec work, reorganized its workforce — the only original employee to survive the transition was Trey’s aunt, the family secretary — and rebuilt from the ground up around pure residential service and replacement. Revenue that had sat at $1.4 million climbed to $28 million. His father stepped back as an absentee owner. McWilliams was in the driver’s seat.

Scaling Up Through Locations, Trades, and the Growth

With the business stabilized and profitable, McWilliams began expanding. The single Lufkin location grew to include Nacogdoches, Livingston, Huntsville, and Dallas. He acquired small businesses in new markets, purchased a plumbing company, and added plumbing services across what had been HVAC-only locations. The original McWilliams & Son brand now covers five locations across East Texas.

The growth model was deliberate. Everything funneled into service and retrofit replacement — a high-margin, recessionresilient business built on maintenance agreements and customer relationships.

“We went from $1.4 million in revenue — a hodgepodge of commercial, plan and spec, and residential service — to $28 million of primarily residential service,” he says. “That’s what works.”

Blue Cardinal: Building a Better Platform

As McWilliams’ business flourished, he watched a wave of peers sell their companies to private equity groups. He saw the appeal — and the hazards. Some friends walked away wealthy. Others found themselves working inside businesses they no longer recognized.

He spent a year educating himself on how private equity works, connected with a mentor who understood the space, and eventually decided to take his own business to market. But he couldn’t get comfortable with what he was hearing.

“Everybody told me how much money I was going to make,” McWilliams says. “But no one wanted to talk about what 10 years looked like.”

His mentor, Kerry Nicholson, offered a reframe: if McWilliams felt that way, other contractors probably did too. Why not build the platform he wished existed? Blue Cardinal Home Services Group was the result.

The idea was to find like-minded operators — people who cared about their teams, their communities, and their longterm legacy — and give them a path to take some chips off the table while keeping their foot on the gas. Blue Cardinal partners with a private equity sponsor, Percheron Capital, which holds a controlling interest in the platform while McWilliams operates as the largest individual shareholder and the operational voice to the businesses.

“In my case, Percheron Capital and Trey — we’re on the board together,” he said.“We collaborate and discuss issues but always find a way to unify for the best of the team and our customer. It’s a healthy balance and great partnership.”

He’s clear-eyed about why private equity sometimes earns its bad reputation: when groups overpay for acquisitions, they create pressure to squeeze value out through aggressive cost-cutting and price increases. Blue Cardinal’s approach is different by design. The goal is operational improvement through procurement leverage, leadership development, trade bolt-ons, and marketing support.

“We look for a business where we can make an operational impact,” he said. “A solid leadership team beyond the owner. A market with upward growth opportunity.”

For standalone acquisitions, Blue Cardinal typically seeks companies above $5 million in revenue, with no more than 20-25% commercial or construction exposure.

Family, Legacy and What Comes Next

Business and family have never been separate categories for McWilliams. His sister Crystal built out the company’s marketing program before the two of them co-founded Lemon Seed Marketing in 2018, a home services marketing strategy firm now used by contractors across the country. His middle sister, Tiffany, is his partner in the pest control venture. Two brothers-in-law, a father-in-law, and a future son-in-law all work within the family enterprise in various capacities.

When asked about bringing his children into the business someday, McWilliams is deliberate. He doesn’t want to script their futures — he wants to be in a position to back them when they’re ready.

“My goal would be to be in a position to make a bet on my kids when they’re ready,” he says. “I get more enjoyment out of them being the face and it being about them, not me.”

It’s the same instinct he had with his sisters Crystal and Tiffany — the recognition that the most meaningful thing he could do was create opportunities for the people around him, not just himself.

For contractors earlier in their journey wondering how to get from a pickup truck and a trailer to something bigger, McWilliams offers a straightforward philosophy: find someone to chase, get exposure, and understand your why before the price gets high.

“The knowledge, the playbooks are out there,” he says. “You just gotta ask the right people.”