Going out on your own is a business decision and a personal one. Here are both, with the arithmetic.
- 01 You're building yourself first
- 02 The number that says you're ready
- 03 What your boss's overhead was buying you
- 04 Build the list, then jump
ToolHut Trade School
You know the trade. Now learn the business.
Pricing that pays, invoices that get collected, customers that come back, and a first hire that doesn't sink the company. ToolHut Trade School teaches the business side of the trades in short, practical courses — free to read with any ToolHut account, and seven full lessons you can read right now without one.
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All 70 lessons. No card, no trial, nothing to cancel.
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70Lessons, every one written and readable today
20Courses across 6 stages of running a trade
$0The whole school, free with any ToolHut account
The road, start to finish
First stop is the day you go out on your own. Last one is the day the business pays you whether you show up or not.
- Course stop
- Free lesson inside
- Stage gate
- On your path
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4 courses · 16 lessons Stage 01 Getting out
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On your path -
On your path The company exists on paper before it exists on a jobsite. The sequence, in order, with the questions to ask your state.
- 01 The order of operations
- 02 Insurance before the first job
- 03 The license question
- 04 Separate the money on day one
- 05 The policy that exists only for the certificate
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On your path A business is boxes, not a person. Draw them on day one, even though every box says your name.
- 01 A business is boxes, not a person
- 02 Four departments, four numbers
- 03 Handing off the first box
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On your path Work finds a new company through people who already know the work. Ads come later; these ten come first.
- 01 The list you already have
- 02 Be findable for free
- 03 Small jobs are auditions
- 04 The wrong first customer can kill you
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5 courses · 18 lessons Stage 02 The business under the trade
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On your path Why the busiest truck in town can still go broke — and the arithmetic that fixes it.
- 01 The hourly rate you copied is lying to you
- 02 Your real cost per billable hour
- 03 Margin is a decision, not a leftover
- 04 Raising prices without losing your nerve
- 05 From your hourly floor to a per-job price
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On your path The work is done. Here is how the money actually arrives — quotes chased, invoices paid, deposits asked for.
- 01 Quote follow-up: three touches, then stop
- 02 Invoices that get paid this week
- 03 Deposits: ask before the truck rolls
- 04 When they won't pay
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On your path Money through the seasons: pay yourself on schedule, tax money that was never yours, and a floor under slow months.
- 01 Quarterly taxes without the panic
- 02 The slow-season floor
- 03 Get paid with the work, not months after it
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On your path Reviews, repeat customers, and an owner's week that runs the business instead of being run by it.
- 01 Reviews are a system, not luck
- 02 The customers you already won
- 03 The owner's week: one hour that runs the business
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On your path The walk-through is a performance with a structure — and the quote it produces wins or loses before it's priced.
- 01 The walk-through that sells
- 02 Capture it once, or drive back
- 03 Everyone who has to say yes
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3 courses · 9 lessons Stage 03 Making it run without you
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On your path Quotes into contracts, changes in writing, photos as records — the paperwork that keeps the money yours.
- 01 Change orders in writing
- 02 The quote is not the contract
- 03 Photos are your paper trail
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On your path Job costing without a bookkeeping degree: estimate against actual, track it while it happens, and let the losers fix your prices.
- 01 Estimate vs actual — the only scorecard
- 02 Track it while it's happening, not after
- 03 The job that lost money is the cheapest lesson
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On your path 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.
- 01 Get the schedule out of your head
- 02 The owner's week — one hour that runs it
- 03 Reminders cut the no-shows
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5 courses · 16 lessons Stage 04 Taking on more
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On your path Bidding, GCs, retainage — the different rules of jobs with more zeroes.
- 01 The GC relationship
- 02 Bidding work with more zeroes
- 03 Retainage and slow pay — the commercial cash trap
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On your path The lowest-cost growth in the trades: the finished job, the customers you already have, and being findable where people already look.
- 01 Your best marketing is the job you just finished
- 02 Get found where people already look
- 03 The customers you already won
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On your path Going from doing the work to leading it: hire from real demand, avoid the classification trap, and delegate with an SOP instead of drowning.
- 01 Hire from demand, not hope
- 02 The 1099 trap
- 03 Delegate or drown — build the SOP
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On your path 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.
- 01 You can teach the skill. You cannot teach the character.
- 02 The interview that actually tells you something
- 03 The paid trial day
- 04 References, and the one question that gets a real answer
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On your path 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.
- 01 Growth is a diagnosis before it is a purchase
- 02 What a hire actually costs you
- 03 Rent, buy, or pass
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1 course · 5 lessons Stage 05 Being the owner
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On your path The person the business is built on. Habits, words, hours and health — trained like trade skills, in reps.
- 01 Your body is the business
- 02 Hard conversations, scripted
- 03 The scarcity habit
- 04 The calendar is the proof
- 05 Learning as an adult
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2 courses · 6 lessons Stage 06 Paying yourself
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On your path A real wage plus profit, paid on a schedule from money sorted by purpose — so the business supports the owner it is built on.
- 01 Pay yourself twice
- 02 A paycheck, on a schedule
- 03 Give every dollar a job the day it lands
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On your path 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.
- 01 The business is not your retirement
- 02 Retirement money when nobody hands you a 401(k)
- 03 Build an asset, not just a job
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Last stop You run it, it doesn't run you
7 of the 20 stops open without an account.
What a lesson looks like
Not a description of one. This is lesson 1 of Price It Right, whole, the way it reads when you open it.
Stop 05 · Price It Right
Free — no account
The hourly rate you copied is lying to you
Most owners set their rate the same way: they find out what the shop across town charges and knock a few dollars off to win work. That number is a trap, because it encodes THEIR costs — their truck payment, their insurance, their helper's wage — not yours.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: you cannot know if a rate is profitable until you know what an hour of your work costs you before you earn a cent on it. Most owners have never done that arithmetic. The ones who have are usually shocked.
A worked example
Say your fixed costs — truck, insurance, phone, tools, software, license fees — come to $4,200 a month. Say you bill 25 hours in a typical week, about 105 a month; the rest of your time goes to driving, quoting, and paperwork.
Your overhead alone is $40 for every billable hour. Charge $85 an hour and pay yourself $38, and your "profit" is $7 an hour — before a single call-back, slow week, or truck repair.
Why a full calendar still loses
That is how a fully booked business goes broke slowly. The calendar is full; the arithmetic is losing.
The worksheet
- List every monthly cost that exists whether or not you work: vehicle, insurance, phone, tools, subscriptions, licenses. Don't know the numbers? Pull three months of bank statements, add up the recurring business charges, and divide by three — done tonight.
- Count your actual BILLABLE hours from the last four weeks — from invoices, not memory.
- Divide. That number is your overhead per billable hour. Write it where you can see it. (Most owners are surprised how high it is — that is the lesson, not a mistake.)
Next lesson we turn that number into a rate on purpose. If you run ToolHut, Estimates → Rate & costing does this arithmetic with your own figures. It is the same math as the worked example above rather than a different one.
All 70 lessons are built this way: one worked example with real numbers, and a worksheet at the end.
Ask one question, get one coach
Dean reads what you wrote and hands it to the coach whose lane it is in — never four opinions on one question. Each one answers from their own playbook and from the numbers in your Hut — so the answer fits your business, not a generic one.
YouHonest answer — where do I start? I'm doing a bit of everything and none of it well.
Dean Calloway Director
Then we pick one thing, not five. Before I hand you to anybody I want two numbers: what you billed last month, and what actually landed in your own pocket. If that second number is thin, you start with Ruth and not with more work. Whichever one is bleeding is what your first 90 days gets built around.
YouTwo customers are 60 days late and I hate asking. What do I say?
Ruth Alvarez Money & margins
You don't ask, you tell — and the telling is a system, not a mood. Deposit up front, terms written on the quote, invoice out the day the job is done instead of the end of the month. For the two already late: one short message with the amount, the date it was due, and a specific next step. No apology in it. If it turns into a lien or a write-off, that is a question for your attorney or your CPA, and I will tell you what to ask them.
YouI send the quote and then silence. Do I chase, or let it go?
Cal Brennan Growth & marketing
You chase, and you decide when before you ever send it. A quote with no follow-up date on it is one you have already handed away. Two touches: the next morning and a week later, both short, both asking a real question instead of "just checking in". And if Ruth has told you the margin is broken, fix that first — more quotes into a leaky price only loses money quicker.
YouI'm turning work away because I can't be on two jobs. Is it time to hire?
Sam Whitaker Crew & operations
Maybe — but a first hire fails when there is nothing written down for them to follow. Take the job you do most often and write the steps down once, on your phone, while you are doing it. That is what you hand the new hire on day one. On W-2 versus 1099, workers' comp and licensing I will give you the shape of the decision and the questions to ask; your CPA and your state give you the answers.
Coaching is a paid add-on. It is business coaching, not legal, tax or financial advice.
Straight answer: this is not a vocational school. Your apprenticeship teaches the craft and earns the license hours — we don't touch that. We teach the business that keeps the craft paying. Together, that's how a trade becomes a company.
What comes with it
Courses that respect your time
Short, practical courses on quoting, job pricing, cash flow, getting reviews, staying compliant and going out on your own — built for people who work ten-hour days, not full-time students.
Four coaches, one lane each
Money, growth, operations, and a director who reads your question and hands it to whichever one owns it — so you get an answer, not four opinions. Each answers from their own playbook and from the numbers in your Hut. A paid add-on.
The library
Playbooks, ebooks, templates and worked examples — the quote that wins, the follow-up that collects, the checklist that keeps the license current. Take them and use them on Monday.
Built by the people behind the software
We build the software that sends the quotes, chases the invoices, and books the jobs for trades businesses. Trade School teaches the business lessons behind that work — how to price a job, win the quote, get paid on time, and keep customers coming back.
Trade school questions, answered straight
Who is it for?
Apprentices planning ahead, journeymen about to go out on their own, and owner-operators who never got taught the office side. If you can do the work but the pricing, paperwork and cash flow are eating you — it's for you.
What does it cost?
The courses, lessons and article library are free with any ToolHut account. The articles are free to read without one. Coaching is the paid tier — $99 a month for all four coaches in one thread, working your own numbers. It bills separately from your software, cancels on its own, and nothing else you buy turns it on or off.
How do I start?
Create a free ToolHut account and the whole curriculum is there — no card, nothing to wait for. When you want a coach on your actual numbers, switch coaching on from Billing in your Hut.
Start course one tonight
Create a free accountAlready run your business on ToolHut? The Trade School is in your Hut now — and coaching switches on from Billing.