Keep more now. Sell for more later.
Midas runs the books, the tax planning and the CFO work for trade businesses doing $1M–$25M — so the money you stop handing the IRS this year shows up again in the price the day you sell.*
Structural figures and published market data, not client results. Disclosures.
You built it. How much are you actually keeping?
Drag to roughly what you take out of the business this year. Directional estimates only — the real number comes from reading your last two years.
You get one exit.
Private equity has bought roughly 800 HVAC, plumbing and electrical companies since 2022, and now accounts for about half of all HVAC deals. Twenty-two platforms are actively rolling up the trades.
Which means the offer is coming. For a lot of owners it already has.
And this is where it goes wrong. A buyer opens the books and finds personal spend run through the company, no job-level costing, add-backs nobody documented, and owner compensation that was never normalised. The deal doesn't die. It gets repriced — and a turn of EBITDA on a $900K business is real money you will never get back.
Your CPA files your return. Your bookkeeper reconciles your bank. Neither of them is building the thing a buyer is going to pay for.
Records what happened
Categorises transactions and closes the month. Not looking at your margin, your structure, or your valuation.
Files once a year
Reports the year you already had. By the time they see it, every decision that could have cut the bill is behind you.
Arrives too late
Shows up when you're ready to sell — and inherits whatever the last ten years of bookkeeping left behind.
Runs the whole arc
Cut the tax bill now, build the books a buyer will pay for, and have the business ready before the offer arrives.
Three ways in.
Where you start depends on the size of the business and how close you are to selling. Everyone starts with the Audit.
Foundation
Get the books right and stop overpaying.
- Monthly bookkeeping and reconciliation
- Job-level costing, so you know which work actually makes money
- Entity structure and owner compensation review
- Equipment, vehicle and depreciation planning
- Quarterly tax planning — before year end, not after
- A P&L you can read in five minutes
Command
Run the business on numbers and grow what it's worth.
- Monthly working session with your CFO
- Gross margin and technician utilisation analysis
- Maintenance-plan and recurring revenue economics
- Hiring, truck and location modelling
- Cash forecasting and a reserve policy that holds
- Acquisition analysis when you're the one buying
Exit
Get the numbers diligence-ready before the offer lands.
- Financial normalisation and documented add-backs
- Recast EBITDA a buyer will actually accept
- Three years of consistent, restated financials
- Buyer-ready reporting pack and data room
- Valuation modelling and sensitivity
- Pre-sale tax structuring alongside your attorney
- Introductions to licensed M&A advisors who run the process
We don't run the transaction and we don't manage your money. We make the numbers right, and bring in licensed specialists for the rest.
GOLD — four phases that turn a job into an asset.
Every contractor we work with runs the same path. Where you start depends on the size of the business. Where it ends is a sale on your terms.
Guard
Stop the bill before it forms. The entity you file under, the owner compensation split, and the equipment and vehicle decisions that have to be made before December 31 — not when your CPA opens the file in March.
Organize
One clean set of books a buyer would accept. Job-level costing, personal spend separated out, add-backs documented as they happen instead of reconstructed under pressure three years later.
Leverage
Grow the number the multiple gets applied to. Margin by service line, technician utilisation, maintenance-plan economics, and the recurring revenue that buyers pay a premium for.
Deploy
Go to market ready. Normalised financials, a recast EBITDA that survives diligence, a data room that's already built — and licensed M&A advisors who run the process for you.
The levers are ordinary. Almost nobody pulls them.
Illustrative figures — your numbers depend on your situation and jurisdiction. Every strategy implemented by licensed professionals.
Section 179 expensing limit for qualifying equipment and vehicles placed in service — a lever most contractors under-use.
Of EBITDA is what messy books routinely cost at the table. On $900K EBITDA that is $900,000.
HVAC, plumbing and electrical companies acquired by private equity since 2022. The offer is coming.
The minimum runway to restate financials properly. Start the year you sell and you have already lost.
Maintenance agreements are the single line item that most reliably moves a trades multiple upward.
The last quarter anything can still be changed. After December 31 you are reporting history, not shaping it.
Start with the Audit — the number before the invoice.
We won't quote you until we've read your last two years.
You get two numbers: what you overpaid in tax, and what your books would cost you in a sale today. In writing, inside a week.
If the first number isn't at least twice our fee, we tell you not to hire us. And we refund the Audit.
Your overpayment number
What you handed over that you didn't have to — from documents you already have.
Your Exit Readiness Score
What a buyer would find if they opened your books tomorrow, scored across five areas.
Sit with our Head of Tax
Elton walks you through both numbers. You leave knowing your options — including “do nothing yet.”
Decide with the facts
No proposal until you've seen the numbers. Most owners already know by then.
Midas is built for you if…
You run $1M–$25M
HVAC, plumbing, electrical or mechanical. Residential, commercial or both. Five to a hundred-plus on the payroll.
You don't know your real margin
You know what you invoiced. You couldn't say which service line actually made money last quarter.
You've had an approach
A platform or a broker has called. Maybe more than once. You don't know whether the number was good.
You want out eventually
Not this year, maybe not next. But you don't intend to be turning a wrench at seventy.
Your CPA is reactive
You see them in March. Nothing they tell you can change the year they're reporting on.
Personal and business are tangled
The truck, the phone, the trip. Fine until a buyer's accountant starts pulling the thread.
Not advice. A system that runs.
Plenty of people will tell a contractor what they should do. We do it, month after month, and you see the result in your own numbers.
Licensed, not theoretical
Filing and tax work is done by licensed professionals. Our Head of Tax is a New York CPA in good standing — verifiable in thirty seconds.
We stay in our lane
We don't broker the sale and we don't manage investments. When you need those, we bring in licensed specialists and say so plainly.
The Audit is refundable
If we can't find at least twice our fee, we say so and give the money back. We'd rather tell you no than take a client we can't help.
This is what lands in your inbox on the tenth.
Not a folder of reconciled transactions. The six things that tell you what the business is doing, what you owe, and what it is worth — every month.
September P&L, by service line
Where the money actually came from
Tax position
Live, not reconstructed in March
Job costing
True margin after labour, materials and truck
Exit readiness
What a buyer would find if they opened the books today
Add-back register
Documented as it happens, not reconstructed under pressure
Ask Midas
Your numbers, not a general article about HVAC
Illustrative figures for a ~$7M contractor. Not a client. Disclosures.
The arc, in numbers.
Illustrative models built from the levers above — not client results. We'll show you real ones under NDA on the call.
Stop the leak
Structure corrected, owner comp normalised, equipment timed properly. The tax bill falls and stays down.
Find the margin
Job costing exposes the service lines losing money. Pricing and utilisation move gross margin by points, not decimals.
Build the asset
Maintenance revenue grows, owner dependency falls, three years of clean restated financials now exist.
Negotiate from strength
When a platform calls, the data room is already built. You're comparing offers instead of scrambling to justify your own numbers.
Not every contractor has the same problem.
Three businesses at three stages, and the thing each one actually needs.
The books are the problem
You're profitable but flying blind, and you're almost certainly overpaying tax through structure alone. Start at Foundation.
The margin is the problem
Revenue grew, profit didn't follow. You need someone doing the numbers weekly, not filing them annually. Start at Command.
The clock is the problem
An offer is live or coming and your financials won't survive it. Start at Exit — and start now.
One team behind every contractor.
You get a bookkeeper, a CPA, a CFO and an exit advisor who all read the same file and talk to each other. That is the entire product.
Books
Monthly close, reconciliation and job costing. The raw material everything else is built on.
Tax
Planning through the year and filing at the end of it, by licensed professionals.
CFO
Margin, cash, hiring, pricing and the decisions that move enterprise value.
Exit
Normalisation, add-backs and the buyer-ready pack — then licensed advisors run the process.
Why we built Midas.
I’ve spent most of the last decade on the other side of the table.
I run Zenith, a CFO firm that has worked with more than a hundred founders, and a lot of my week is spent on deals — raising capital, structuring transactions, sitting in rooms where a business is being valued.
Here is what I kept seeing. A good company, built by someone who worked properly hard for twenty years, gets an offer. Then the buyer’s accountants open the books. Personal spend is run through the business. There is no job-level costing, so nobody can prove which work is profitable. Add-backs that were completely legitimate were never documented, and now they have to be reconstructed from memory under time pressure.
The deal rarely dies. It gets repriced. And a turn of EBITDA on a business throwing off $900K is the best part of a million dollars — gone, quietly, in a conversation the owner didn’t know they were having.
The maddening part is that all of it was fixable. Two or three years earlier, cheaply, by someone doing ordinary work well.
So that’s Midas. Cut what you’re overpaying now, because you should keep it. Build the books a buyer will pay for, because one day one of them is going to look. And when that day comes, be the person comparing offers — not the one explaining their own numbers.
— Lavine
I’m Carter.
I’ve built and scaled offers for years, which mostly means I’ve watched a great many people get sold to badly.
Contractors get it worse than most. Every week somebody calls about leads, software, a private equity roll-up, a coaching programme. Almost none of them are offering to look at the numbers and tell the owner the truth about what they have.
So the standard I hold us to is simple: everything we put in front of you should be worth your time before you’ve paid us anything. The Exit Readiness Score, the Audit, the session with Elton — they exist so you know your number before you decide anything at all.
And if the honest answer is that your books are fine and you don’t need us, we’ll say that. It costs us a client and buys us a reputation, and in this industry that trade is not close.
— Carter
The team behind your numbers.
Lavine Hemlani
Founder of Zenith, the CFO firm behind 100+ founders across biotech, e-commerce and software. A decade building, buying and structuring companies across the US, UK and Dubai. He started Midas after watching too many owner-operated businesses get repriced in diligence over bookkeeping that could have been fixed years earlier.
Carter Turnbull
Has built and scaled offers across services and coaching for years. At Midas he owns how contractors find us and what the first conversation feels like — on the view that trades owners get sold to constantly and advised almost never.
Elton Lalaj, CPA
Two decades in public accounting, specialising in construction, hospitality and real estate. Founder of Lalaj CPA Group — the practice that prepares and files for every Midas client. He designs your plan personally, leads every strategy session, and signs off before anything is claimed.
Matthew Singer
Runs operations and delivery — the machinery that makes sure what we promise actually happens every month. He also leads the wealth side: coordinating what happens to the proceeds once a business is sold.
Shreyas Manchanda
Chief Growth Officer at Zenith, where he works on capital markets — debt placement, private credit and project finance. At Midas he runs financing: equipment, fleet and acquisition funding on terms that don't quietly cost you the business.
The Midas tax team.
Tax consulting and compliance for corporations and high-net-worth individuals, across domestic and foreign industries.
Taxation, financial reporting, regulatory compliance and advisory for businesses needing full financial management.
Tax preparation and accounting support across the firm's corporate and individual client base.
Tax consulting, compliance and dispute resolution — construction, hospitality and professional services businesses.
Full-cycle accounting, tax compliance and financial advisory across owner-operated businesses.
Our board.
Kyle Kaplanis
Nearly ten years in the creator economy. Managed five of the world's top 20 TikTok creators and executed millions of dollars in brand partnerships with Apple, Samsung, Disney, DoorDash, Nike and Skittles. Advises on brand, audience and distribution.
Evan Meagher
Seed investor at FOG Ventures. Former chief financial officer of CoreWeave.
Jimmy Ku
Venture partner at 10X Capital. Previously head of growth at Flutterwave.
Nikhil Arora
Chief executive of Epignosis. Previously senior roles at GoDaddy, WeWork and Intuit.
Richard Pattle
Co-founder of Indian asset manager True Beacon. Former vice chairman of Standard Chartered Private Bank.
Get the books right. Stop overpaying.
For contractors doing $1M–$3M. The work that should have been happening all along — done properly, every month.
Close and reconcile
Books closed by the tenth. Bank, card and loan accounts reconciled. No more guessing at a number and finding out in March.
Job-level costing
Labour, materials and truck cost allocated to the work. You find out which service lines make money and which ones you have been subsidising.
Structure and owner comp
Entity reviewed, owner salary set at a defensible level, and the distribution split done properly. This is usually the single largest line of savings.
Tax planning before year end
Equipment, vehicles, depreciation elections and timing — decided while they can still be changed.
Run the business on numbers.
For $3M–$10M. Everything in Foundation, plus someone whose job is the number at the bottom — and the number a buyer would put on the business.
A working session
Not a report emailed to you. An hour with your CFO on what moved, what didn't, and what you're deciding this month.
Margin and utilisation
Gross margin by service line, technician billable hours, callback rates and the true cost of a truck on the road.
Recurring revenue
Maintenance-plan pricing, attach rate and retention — the line item that most reliably moves a trades multiple.
Modelling
Hiring, trucks, a second location, or buying the competitor down the road. Run before you commit, not after.
Make the numbers survive diligence.
For owners selling in the next 12–36 months. The work a buyer's accountant is going to do — done first, by your side of the table.
Normalisation
Personal spend identified and separated. Every add-back documented with support a buyer will accept, not a list written the week before the call.
Recast EBITDA
A defensible earnings figure, restated consistently across three years, that holds up when it is tested line by line.
The pack and the data room
Financial statements, KPI reporting, customer and revenue concentration, contracts. Built before anyone asks for it.
Valuation modelling
What the business is worth now, what it would be worth with two or three specific changes, and what each one costs to make.
Pre-sale tax structuring
Deal structure has an enormous effect on what you actually keep. Planned with your attorney, well before terms are agreed.
The right advisor
We introduce you to licensed M&A advisors who run the process and negotiate for you. We don't broker the deal — we make you ready for one.
The Exit Readiness Score.
Everything you need to know your number before you spend a dollar with us. Four things, all free, in about a week.
The 5-minute score
Six questions below give you a directional estimate of what an unplanned year is costing you.
The Playbook
The levers contractors at your size actually use, in plain English. Yours to keep, whatever you decide.
The Audit
Your last two years reviewed by our Head of Tax — what you overpaid and what a buyer would find. In writing.
45-min strategy session
Sit with Elton Lalaj, CPA. You leave knowing your number and your options — even if that's “do nothing yet.”
Start with the 5-minute score.
Six quick questions — you'll see your estimate the moment you finish.
Let's see if Midas is a fit.
Takes under a minute. We take on a limited number of contractors at a time, so this helps us prioritise properly.
What a planned three years looks like.
Illustrative models, not client results — built from the levers on this site and public trades benchmarks. Real client numbers are shared on the call, under NDA.
Structure first
Sole-proprietor filing, no retirement plan, no job costing. Entity election plus a defensible owner salary and a funded plan changes the annual bill materially. The margin work comes after — and only then do you find out that install is carrying service.
Margin, then multiple
Revenue had doubled in three years and profit hadn't moved. Costing by service line exposes the discounting. Maintenance agreements go from a rounding error to a real revenue base — which is the line a buyer actually pays up for.
Eighteen months out
An approach from a platform started the clock. Three years restated, add-backs documented with support, owner dependency reduced on the sales side, data room built before the LOI. The negotiation happens on the numbers instead of about them.
The Contractor's Tax & Exit Playbook.
Entity and owner-comp maths, equipment and vehicle timing, retirement stacking, and the six things a buyer looks at first — written for people who run trucks, not spreadsheets. Tell us where you are and it's yours.
The fine print, in plain English.
Figures on this site are illustrative
Every number shown — calculator outputs, scores, worked examples — is a directional model, not a prediction and not a client result. Your outcome depends on your entity, your state, your books and your facts.
This is not tax or legal advice
Nothing here creates a professional relationship. Tax preparation and filing are performed by licensed professionals, and nothing is claimed on a return without their sign-off.
We do not broker transactions
Midas prepares a business for sale. We do not run the transaction, negotiate terms, or take compensation based on a deal closing. When you go to market we introduce you to licensed M&A advisors who do that work.
We are not an investment adviser
Midas does not manage investments, provide investment advice, or take a fee based on assets. Where wealth planning is needed after a sale, we coordinate with licensed advisers — their engagement is with you, not us.
The Audit refund
If the Audit does not identify recoverable or forward savings of at least twice our proposed fee, we tell you so and refund the Audit in full. That is a commercial promise about our own fee, not a guarantee of any tax outcome.
Third-party figures
Market statistics cited on this site come from published industry and government sources. They describe the market, not your business.
What we do with your information.
What we collect
What you type into a form on this site — name, email, phone, and the details you give about your business — plus basic analytics about how the site is used.
What we use it for
To reply to you, prepare your Audit, and deliver the service if you become a client. Nothing else.
What we never do
We do not sell your information and we do not share it with anyone outside the people delivering your work. Financial documents you send us are handled under professional confidentiality.
Your control
Ask us to send you what we hold, correct it, or delete it, and we will. Email lavine@zenith-grp.co.
Using this site.
This site is information
Nothing on it is an offer, a professional engagement, or advice for your situation. An engagement begins only when there is a signed agreement between us.
Estimates are estimates
Calculators, scores and worked examples are directional models. They are not predictions, not guarantees, and not client results. See Disclosures.
Scope of what we do
We provide accounting, tax and financial preparation services. We do not broker transactions and we do not manage investments.
Questions
Email lavine@zenith-grp.co and a person will answer.
How we handle your financials.
Documents
Bank statements, returns and financials are exchanged through encrypted file transfer, never over plain email, and are stored encrypted at rest.
Access
Only the people working on your account can see your file. Access is removed when someone leaves the engagement or the firm.
Accounting systems
Where we connect to your accounting or payroll software, we use the platform's own permissioned access. We never ask for your banking passwords.
Retention
Records are retained for the period required for tax and professional purposes, then destroyed. Ask us and we will tell you exactly what we hold.
The questions owners actually ask.
I already have a bookkeeper and a CPA. Why would I change?
What does it actually cost?
I'm not selling. Is any of this worth it?
Are you going to put aggressive things on my return?
Do you work inside ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro or QuickBooks?
Do you sell the business for me?
What happens in the first month?
How do I know you understand the trades?
Build a business worth selling.
Start with the Audit. Two numbers, in writing, inside a week — what you overpaid, and what your books would cost you at the table today. If it isn't worth twice our fee, we'll tell you.