Growing a home improvement company can quickly become a numbers game. Leaders track leads, sales, conversion rates, marketing costs, and revenue because these metrics indicate whether the business is moving forward. But numbers cannot explain everything. They cannot show whether people feel valued, whether leaders are building a strong culture, or whether a company can keep growing without relying on a single great salesperson or a single leader holding everything together.
That tension stood out during James Zayner’s conversation with Greg Cummings at The Pinnacle Experience in 2024. At the end of day one, Zayner, Former Director of B2B Marketing at Modernize, reflected on an award ceremony that recognized something beyond business performance. “I think that was really cool to see appreciation for something that’s going on that’s different than money and revenue,” Zayner said. He saw the moment as proof that a business community could care about growth while still keeping people and humanity at the center.
The conversation then moved from what companies value to how they scale. Zayner pointed to Brian Elias’ presentation as an example of why growth does not have to depend on luck or one strong personality. He focused instead on systems that can be understood, repeated, and improved.
“It’s a repeatable system,” Zayner said. He later summed up the lesson even more clearly: “It’s systems and execution.”
For leaders attending a home improvement executive conference for business owners, that message connects two sides of growth that are often discussed apart. Strong companies need systems that help people perform again and again, but they also need leaders who remember that the people doing the work are more than numbers on a report. The real question is not whether companies should choose people or performance. It is whether they can build performance in a way that helps people succeed.
Power100 helped bring that larger leadership question into focus through Cummings’ rapid-fire conversation with Zayner. Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that recognizes and elevates the top leaders and most impactful companies in the home improvement industry.
During the exchange, Cummings connected Zayner’s comments about the award back to a simple belief: “It’s not about bottom-line revenue. It’s about people leading people.” That idea gave the conversation its deeper value.
The award showed what the industry can choose to celebrate. The discussion about systems showed how companies can make strong performance repeatable. Together, they created a clearer view of growth, one in which strong leadership protects the human side of the business while clear systems help the business move forward.
James Zayner’s rapid fire conversation with Greg Cummings at The Pinnacle Experience 2024 moved quickly from business results to something harder to measure. Leads, revenue, sales, and conversion rates are important because they help leaders see how the company is performing. But Zayner pointed to another side of growth. Behind every result are people who have to carry the work, serve the customer, and believe in what the company is building.
James Zayner, Former Director of B2B Marketing at Modernize
That is why one of his strongest memories from day one was not a sales lesson or a marketing tactic. It was seeing an award recognize something beyond money.
“I think that was really cool to see appreciation for something that’s going on that’s different than money and revenue,” Zayner said.
His point raises an important question for leaders to consider. A company can know exactly how much revenue it produced and still know very little about how its people feel, how its culture is changing, or what kind of leadership is being built underneath the numbers.
For leaders, that difference matters. Financial results show whether the company is moving. They do not always show what kind of company is being created along the way.
Zayner’s comments remind leaders that the strongest growth story includes both. Companies need healthy numbers, but they also need people who feel that their work matters.
Zayner saw the award ceremony as more than a nice moment. He saw it as a sign of what the community valued.
“It’s showing that this community really cares about people and humanity and not so much about leads and revenue,” he said.
That does not mean leads and revenue are unimportant. Zayner works in B2B marketing, where business results matter every day. His point was that those numbers should not become the only way leadership is judged.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100 at The Pinnacle Experience
Greg Cummings responded with a similar idea.
“It’s not about bottom-line revenue. It’s about people leading people,” Cummings said.
That message gives recognition a larger role. Awards tell the industry what deserves attention. If the only people celebrated are those with the biggest revenue numbers, success can begin to look very narrow. But when leadership, service, humanity, and impact are also recognized, the picture becomes wider.
That can influence culture inside companies too.
Employees notice what leaders praise.
Managers notice which behaviors receive attention.
Future leaders learn what the industry respects.
For a home improvement executive conference for business owners, those signals matter because owners are not only building companies. They are helping define what leadership looks like for the next group of people coming behind them.
Recognition becomes most powerful when it does more than show who performed well. It helps show what kind of leadership is worth following.
After talking about people and recognition, Zayner shifted to one of the business lessons that stood out to him most.
He pointed to Brian Elias of Refloor and what his growth story could teach builders and remodelers who were still working toward a larger scale.
Zayner said the example was inspiring because it showed that strong growth could be repeated.
“It’s a repeatable system,” he said.
That idea changes how leaders view successful companies.
If growth is viewed only as luck, timing, or a single gifted founder, there is very little for another business owner to learn. But if parts of that success can be repeated, then leaders can study what made it possible.
They can ask what processes stayed in place.
They can look at how people were trained.
They can study how leads moved through the business.
They can see what leadership habits supported the team.
They can understand which parts of the company had to become more organized before growth could continue.
This is where contractor leadership and business growth become closely connected. A company becomes easier to scale when success does not depend on one person remembering everything or solving every problem.
A strong system gives more people a clear way to do good work.
That makes growth easier to repeat.
Zayner then steered the conversation toward a very practical aspect of growth.
He said a company might use door-knocking.
It might use Facebook ads.
The exact channel was not his main point.
The larger lesson was that leaders have to figure out how to make the chosen method work inside their own business.
That matters because home improvement companies are surrounded by new marketing ideas. A leader may hear about one company winning through digital advertising and immediately want to copy it. Another company may be growing through canvassing. Another may depend heavily on referrals.
The risk comes when a business keeps changing tactics before it learns how to execute any of them well.
A lead source needs a process behind it.
Door knocking requires training, clear expectations, follow-up, and a sales team ready to handle the opportunities it creates.
Facebook ads need strong messages, fast response times, effective appointment setting, and a clear path from the first click to the final sale.
Without a process, the channel is only an activity.
Zayner reduced the lesson to four clear words:
“It’s systems and execution.”
That is a powerful message for leaders seeking a home improvement sales and lead-generation conference. The best marketing strategy is not always the newest one. It is often the one that the company can understand, measure, improve, and execute again and again.
A good idea starts the process.
Execution is what turns it into a result.
Zayner did not talk about systems as if people could be removed from the equation.
He connected execution directly to mindset.
“You have to just figure it out to where you can get your sales team in the right mindset where they execute,” Zayner said.
That line brings the people side of the interview back into the growth discussion.
A company can create the perfect script.
It can install strong software.
It can track every sales number.
It can build a detailed process.
But someone still has to follow it.
That is where leadership becomes important.
Managers have to help the team understand why the process exists. They have to coach people when execution slips. They have to show what good performance looks like. They have to reinforce the standard until the system becomes part of the team’s way of working.
Mindset matters because people are more consistent when they understand what they are being asked to do and believe the process can help them succeed.
That gives the leader a different job.
The goal is not simply to create a system.
The goal is to build a team that can use the system well.
For companies focused on home improvement sales team growth, that can be the difference between a process that looks good on paper and one that produces real results inside the business.
The two parts of Zayner’s conversation eventually came back together.
The award ceremony showed the value of people.
Brian Elias’ talk showed the value of systems.
Zayner found meaning in both.
That matters because people and process are sometimes treated as opposing ideas.
A company may say it is people-focused and become afraid of adding too much structure.
Another company may become highly focused on process and forget how those systems affect the people expected to use them.
The strongest businesses can do both.
Clear systems can make work easier for employees. People know what is expected. Managers can coach from the same standard. New team members can learn faster. Good performance becomes easier to repeat because fewer things are left to guesswork.
At the same time, strong leadership helps make sure those systems serve people rather than reduce them to numbers.
That is where Zayner’s comments become more than a lesson about sales.
Systems can help a company grow.
People give that growth meaning.
The better question for leaders is not whether they should choose one or the other.
It is whether they can create an environment where good people have clear systems that help them do their best work.
That may be one of the most useful lessons to come from the conversation at Pinnacle. Strong growth does not have to trade humanity for performance. The two can support each other when leadership is willing to build both with care.
James Zayner’s comments at The Pinnacle Experience brought two very different moments together. One was about recognition beyond money and revenue. The other was about building systems that could be repeated. Together, they showed a wider view of growth.
The Pinnacle Experience in session
Builders and remodelers need clear processes to scale. They need sales teams that can execute, managers who can coach, and systems that help good work happen more than once. But structure alone cannot carry a company forward. People still have to believe in the work, understand the goal, and feel that their effort matters.
That is what makes Zayner’s view especially useful. As Former Director of B2B Marketing at Modernize, he worked closely with the point where marketing created opportunities, and people had to turn those opportunities into real business. His comments at Pinnacle showed that growth is not only about creating more demand. It is also about building a company that knows what to do when that demand arrives.
Home improvement leaders will always need to measure revenue, leads, sales, and conversion. Those numbers help show what is working. But the companies built to last will also pay attention to what the numbers cannot explain on their own.
They will look at leadership.
They will look at the mindset.
They will look at culture.
They will look at how well people can follow the systems around them.
That creates a more complete picture of growth.
The goal is not to build a company that grows at any cost. It is to build one where strong people have clear systems, leaders create consistency, and good performance can happen again and again without losing the human side of the business.
That is where growth becomes more than math. It becomes something people can help build, believe in, and carry forward.
We believe revenue matters, but it does not tell the full story of a company or its leader. Our current ranking system looks across several areas, including growth, customer sentiment, community impact, partner relationships, and company culture. That allows us to look at how a business performs while also studying how it treats customers, develops people, and contributes to the wider industry. James Zayner’s comments at Pinnacle fit that idea closely because he also saw value in recognizing leadership beyond money alone.
We use those conversations as part of a wider knowledge platform for the home improvement industry. Our work includes original journalism, feature interviews, rankings, Expert Contributor content, and Inner Circle resources that provide leaders with continued access to business insights. The goal is for a useful lesson captured at an event to keep creating value after everyone has gone home.
No. Zayner did not argue that revenue, leads, or sales should be ignored. His point was that those numbers should not become the only measure of a strong company. Businesses still need financial results, but people are responsible for producing those results. His comments suggest that leaders should study both sides of growth by asking how the company is performing and what kind of culture and leadership are being built while that performance improves.
Yes, because a repeatable system does not require every company to use the exact same tactic. The stronger idea is to create a clear process that people can understand, follow, measure, and improve. One contractor may depend on canvassing while another uses digital marketing or referrals. What can still be repeated is the discipline around training, follow-up, accountability, sales execution, and learning from results. That is one reason contractor leadership and business growth remain closely connected.
Zayner was interested that Elias had already built a successful business and was building again. To Zayner, that suggested growth was not the result of a single lucky moment. He believed leaders could study the systems and processes behind that performance. As Zayner said during the conversation, “It’s a repeatable system.” His larger lesson was that builders and remodelers can make scale easier to understand by studying what can be done well more than once.
No. The channel was not the main point. Zayner used door knocking and Facebook advertising as examples of different ways companies can create opportunities. His larger message was that whichever method a company chooses needs a clear system behind it and a team ready to execute. He summed up the idea simply: “It’s systems and execution.” For leaders interested in a home improvement sales and lead generation conference, that distinction matters because changing lead sources alone does not fix weak execution.
They can if leadership treats the system as more important than the people using it. Zayner’s conversation pointed toward a different balance. He valued an award that recognized people and humanity, while also praising repeatable systems and strong execution. The two ideas can work together. Clear systems can reduce confusion and give employees better direction, while good leadership ensures those systems help people succeed rather than making them feel replaceable.
Because the business issues behind the conversation did not end with the event. The Pinnacle Experience continued to center its program on leadership, lead generation, sales, technology, interactive discussions, and practical growth strategies in its following program. That makes Zayner’s comments useful beyond a recap of a past event. Leaders attending or seeking a remodeling business growth and leadership conference are still trying to answer the same larger question: how do you build systems that scale while keeping strong people and leadership at the center of the company?
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that recognizes and elevates the top leaders and most impactful companies in the home improvement industry. Led by CEO Greg Cummings, Power100 brings together contractors, executives, advisors, and industry voices to share lessons that help companies lead better, grow stronger, and serve people well. Through national rankings, executive interviews, event conversations, leadership insights, and industry content, the platform helps turn proven experience into practical knowledge while keeping people, culture, customer experience, and business performance at the center of the conversation.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
