Image: Nexstar Network
Nexstar Network is one of North America’s most influential coaching and training groups for residential HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors. It has decided to part ways with every private-equity (PE) backed member. The move affects roughly one-third of its membership and nearly half of Nexstar’s revenue, according to interviews and coverage in industry and business press.
What exactly is changing?
PE-backed memberships sunset: Nexstar says all PE-backed member companies will have their memberships ended by the end of 2025.
No PE presence at events: Going forward, those tied to private equity won’t attend Nexstar’s closed-door events and coaching forums.
Buying group stays open: PE-backed firms can still participate in Nexstar’s open-to-the-public buying group even after their memberships end.
Nexstar leadership says the decision followed an internal review that found PE-backed companies had grown from ~10% of members a few years ago to ~33% today, and were generating about 50% of organization revenue.
Why is Nexstar doing this?
CEO Julian Scadden frames the move as a return to the group’s founding mission: serving independent contractors. It was reported on Homepros, “Our focus has to remain on the technician turned business person with a handful of trucks, who’s trying to figure out how to make payroll next week while still being home for dinner,” Scadden says.
Scadden and board leaders also said Nexstar can weather the revenue hit thanks to strong reserves and long-term planning, avoiding layoffs while reallocating coaches to earlier-stage members.
In Scadden’s blog post, he addresss the question himself on why he proactively cut 33% of his business:
Nexstar wasn’t built just to maximize revenue.
It was built to serve people like my past self, the high school dropout who went from digging ditches to owning their own plumbing company and who knew there had to be a better way.
What it means if you’re an independent contractor
A safer peer room: Expect more open sharing at Nexstar events - Pricing, org design, dispatch KPIs without enterprise-scale acquirers in the room.
More coach bandwidth: Nexstar says the same experts who were helping $50M+ businesses will be redirected to help smaller operators professionalize faster (pricing, call-handling, maintenance-plan penetration, tech recruiting).
Easier “first million” path: The organization explicitly says the goal is to help technicians-turned-owners make their first million—not optimize PE-level performance metrics.
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