MORE EPIC THAN EVER BEFORE!

Inspired by his Wall Street Journal bestselling book Never Split the Difference (which has sold over 5M copies worldwide!), FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss shares one of the most powerful tools for successful negotiation: tactical empathy. In this riveting program, he shares how empathizing with the ‘other side’ can lead to true collaboration and a win-win solution in business and in life.

Most of what you’d want to learn from the industry’s biggest operators, you’d have to pull out of them one conversation at a time. This is four of them, on one stage, taking on the questions you’d ask if you had them to yourself.

Between them, Paul Kelly, Ken Goodrich, Tommy Mello, and Chad Peterman have founded, bought, and scaled home services companies from a handful of trucks to hundreds of millions in annual revenue. In this main stage roundtable, they open up the playbooks: what they’d do differently, what they’d never change, and what they’ve learned the expensive way so you don’t have to.

In this session you’ll learn:

• The levers these operators pull when business slows down — and the business principles they never break
• How they win the war for talent, and the leadership qualities they look for before promoting anyone
• How to make more money on the revenue you already have
• What they’d tell an owner who feels stuck, and the culture principles that made the biggest difference in their own companies
• Their biggest regrets — and who each of them considers the GOAT of all GOATs

There are resources hiding in plain sight inside almost every manufacturer and distributor relationship — donated equipment, accrual funds, marketing dollars, training support. Real growth most contractors never think to ask for.

Brad Barron built his company’s in-house technician training school entirely on donated equipment, and used manufacturer accrual funds to power a serious jump in video marketing — plus a chunk of operating costs. Dave Marrs shows where that mindset can lead: he treated one manufacturer relationship as worth investing in, and it grew into a joint project, then a business partnership, and today a national platform as one of the most recognized names in the trades.

Brad and Dave will paint a clear picture of what hidden opportunities are already likely available to you — and how to turn them into a stronger bench of techs and a stronger sales pipeline, no new budget required.

In this session you’ll learn:

• How Brad Barron got a fully equipped training school by asking the right question, not writing a check
• Where accrual funds come from, what they can fund, and how to put them to work
• The exact conversation to have with your distributor or manufacturer rep this month
• How Dave Marrs turned one manufacturer relationship into a business partnership and a national platform
• A simple way to audit your own relationships to find support hiding in plain sight

Your greatest competitive advantage isn’t your trucks, your technology, or your marketing — it’s your people. But most companies invest in everything except the thing that actually drives performance, then wonder why turnover is high and results are inconsistent.

In this session, Kathryn Howard — founder of KP Performance Group and former owner at Lee’s Air, Plumbing & Heating, where she helped drive a nine-figure home services organization — shares the leadership principles that create trust, accountability, and ownership at every level.

Through real-world examples and practical strategies, she demonstrates the systems that turn a team into a culture of excellence, where every employee understands how their work contributes to the mission and the bottom line. Her message is simple: when you intentionally invest in your people, the profits appear.

In this session you’ll learn:

• The leadership principles that build trust, accountability, and a culture of ownership
• Systems that drive stronger performance and keep your best people from walking
• How to connect every employee’s work to the company’s mission — and its bottom line
• Why investing in people elevates the customer experience and creates lasting profitability

Most contractors have tried ChatGPT. Some have gone further with tools like an AI CSR. But almost no one is using AI where it can move the needle most: generating more leads.

In this session, Federico Crivelli of Avoca — the AI front office powering hundreds of home services companies — walks through the cutting-edge, AI-powered workflows top contractors are using to fill their boards. No hype, no sales pitch — just data-backed strategies with a real implementation plan you can put to work right away.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• Intelligent capacity planning and audience building for your outbound campaigns
• End-to-end AI-powered direct mail campaigns, integrated with SMS and calls
• AI-powered website building and conversion optimization

Nobody buys a phone anymore. They pay for it monthly, they upgrade before it breaks, and they never think twice about it. Cars, the same. Homeowners have been trained for years to think in monthly payments — and yet when it comes to the most expensive machine in their house, we still ask them to think in one big number. And it’s costing you sales.

In this session, Matthew Bratsis, architect of OPTIMUS Financing and VP at EGIA, breaks down how leasing changes that conversation. Homeowners get a new, efficient system with no money down — plus maintenance and repairs handled for the life of the plan — for a monthly payment they already understand. A different qualification process means you also approve customers you may have otherwise lost. And when the term’s up, they can upgrade to brand-new equipment the same way they trade up their phone.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• Why monthly payments are the language your customers already speak — and how to sell in it
• Why a plan that includes maintenance and repairs changes what you’re actually selling
• How to present the upgrade cycle so homeowners see a path to newer, better equipment
• How a different qualification process opens up jobs you’d otherwise walk away from
• Why leasing isn’t just for the customers who can’t qualify — and how to spot the ones who’d choose it

Light commercial projects mean bigger tickets and steadier revenue, but winning them is a different game than homeowner marketing. Longer buying cycles, multiple decision-makers, tighter targeting, and stronger follow-up all come into play — and the contractors who treat commercial leads like residential leads rarely win them.

In this session, Eddie Childs, VP of Growth Marketing at Mediagistic, one of the home services industry’s most coveted marketing agencies, breaks down practical B2B strategies HVAC contractors can use to identify, attract, and convert better light commercial opportunities.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• How to target the right light commercial prospects — and the decision-makers behind them
• How to build marketing that attracts higher-value projects, not just more calls
• How to follow up and stay top of mind through longer buying cycles until the deal closes

When growth stalls, the first instinct is to buy more leads. But marketing doesn’t determine growth by itself — operations determines the value of every opportunity marketing creates. Better systems, better processes, and better execution turn the same leads into more revenue.

In this session, Chad Peterman — President and CEO of Peterman Brothers, who grew his family’s Indianapolis home services company from $4 million to more than $120 million — makes the case for asking a better question than “How do we get more leads?” Drawing on the operational playbook behind one of the industry’s most impressive growth stories, he shows why the fastest path to growth often means spending less on marketing and more on the systems that turn existing demand into revenue.

In this session you’ll learn:

• What actually happens to the leads you already have and how you should be analyzing them
• Where opportunities are quietly being lost between the first call and the finished job
• Which operational levers improve results fastest, so you know where to start
• How to decide when the answer is more marketing — and when it’s better execution

You’ve been handed one finish line: sell. It’s the default plan, the assumed goal, the thing everyone in the trades tells you to work toward. But nobody asks the better question: what does winning look like on your terms?

In this session, Stephanie Allen — CEO of AirWorks Solutions, a multi-million dollar HVAC and plumbing company for which she turned down an exit offer — breaks down the ownership decisions and structural moves that create real leverage in your business. Here’s the surprising part: the same choices that make a business worth keeping also make it the business buyers pay a premium for.

Every owner exits eventually, whether through a sale, a succession, or a someday they haven’t planned yet. Build to keep, and when that day comes, you negotiate from strength — with more money and more control in your hands starting this year.

In this session you’ll learn:

• What “build it to sell” quietly costs owners in freedom and control — and why building to keep expands your options instead of limiting them
• Ownership and structure decisions that create leverage you can act on this year, not just at exit
• How financial discipline and clean systems turn your business into one that creates choices instead of dependence
• A simple framework for telling whether your business is built to sell, built to keep, or stuck depending on you
• The questions every owner should answer about their own ownership before ever considering selling

AI is moving faster than any technology the trades have ever seen — and while some contractors are already using it to book more calls, cut office workload, and respond to leads in seconds, most are still wondering where to even start.

This panel brings together industry experts working at the front lines of AI and automation in home services, so you can separate the hype from what actually drives results.

Key Takeaways Include:

• Where AI delivers the fastest ROI in a contracting business — from call handling to dispatching to follow-up
• Automating the office: reducing manual work without losing the personal touch customers expect
• What to implement now vs. what to wait on — and how to avoid expensive missteps
• Whatever’s on your mind – Open Q&A ensures you get answers to your burning questions

Commercial work cannot be priced like residential work with a few extra dollars added. The customers, sales cycles, labor planning, risk, and profit expectations are all different — and if your commercial pricing is wrong, nothing else in your business works the way it should. More service calls, more agreements, more replacements, and more technicians can actually make the problem worse if the work isn’t priced to carry its true costs.

In this workshop, James Leichter — founding faculty member of EGIA Contractor University and one of the industry’s foremost authorities on contractor finances — shows you how to price every major type of commercial work, from service calls and maintenance agreements to quoted repairs, replacements, and large commercial jobs.

You’ll get practical methods ranging from simple rules of thumb you can use immediately to advanced, accounting-driven techniques built on job-costing data. Plus, every attendee receives the free Excel pricing tool James uses with his own consulting clients.

In this session you’ll learn:

• Why commercial work demands its own pricing — and how bad pricing quietly destroys profit even while sales grow
• How to price commercial service calls, maintenance agreements, quoted repairs, replacements, and full commercial jobs
• Simple pricing rules of thumb you can start using immediately — plus advanced methods using labor burden, contribution margin, overhead, and job-costing data
• How to account for commercial-specific risks like callbacks, warranty exposure, delayed approvals, and after-hours work
• How to tell whether each department, account, or type of work is truly carrying its share of overhead
• How to use the included Excel pricing tool to test scenarios and make better pricing decisions

The brands that win today don’t advertise—they entertain. Mike Cessario proved this by turning canned water into a viral sensation and global brand through pure entertainment strategy. In this high-energy session, the CEO and Founder of Liquid Death reveals how to hack culture, build fanatical loyalty, and create content people actually crave. No theory, no fluff—just the proven playbook for turning entertainment into massive ROI in an attention-starved world.

Jim Gaffigan is one of the most popular and accomplished touring comedians on the planet — a Grammy-nominated stand-up with eleven specials to his name, a three-time Emmy winner, the first comedian ever to hit a billion streams on Pandora, and a New York Times best-selling author twice over.

He’s the voice of Massimo in Disney/Pixar’s Luca, Mr. Smee in Disney’s Peter Pan & Wendy, and he’s shared the screen with Jerry Seinfeld, Melissa McCarthy, and Hugh Grant. He’s performed for a million people and Pope Francis at the same event. And he built all of it on comedy anyone can enjoy — the kind that brings down the house without ever making the room wince.

Now he’s bringing an hour of it to the EPIC2027 main stage. This is the first time in the conference’s history we’ve closed a day with a headline comedy act, and we didn’t book a warm-up — we booked one of the best to ever do it. Grab your seat early. This is the room you’ll want to be in.