Homeless to $3M: A Plumbing Owner’s Comeback
Next Level Pros
Chris Lee
4.7 • 165 Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From living under a bridge to running a $3M plumbing company — this is how Cale Forester rebuilt his life and business from the ground up. We dive into how Cale’s veteran-owned plumbing shop has doubled revenue year after year without outside investment, fancy tech, or massive crews.
Cale and fellow trades leader Dylan Moya sit down with Chris Lee to reveal the simple systems, rebrand strategy, and sales process that turned a “chuck-in-a-truck” startup into a multi-million-dollar operation.
If you own a plumbing, HVAC, or home-service business and want predictable growth built on process—not luck—watch until the end for their exact playbook.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Kale Forrester launched his plumbing business in 2022, |
| 0:03.4 | doing $500,000 his first year as a sole proprietor, |
| 0:07.4 | and doubling his revenue every year hitting $3 million in 2025. |
| 0:12.6 | And the craziest part of it all? |
| 0:14.3 | Just a few years earlier, he was homeless. |
| 0:17.1 | Hear his story, how he battled back from drug addiction |
| 0:20.3 | and living under a bridge to taking the leadership lessons from rehab and applying them to lead his team of five humming crews. So, Kale, not too long ago, you were freaking homeless in the streets. |
| 0:47.6 | And today you're running a successful plumbing business. |
| 0:50.6 | You're going to do what, $3 million this year? |
| 0:52.0 | We'll do $3 million this year. |
| 0:53.2 | Dude, first of all, congratulations. That's freaking rad, right? It's not too often that I get guys |
| 0:59.6 | on my show that they've lived on the streets, been in the lowest of lows that have like just |
| 1:05.3 | ugh. So give me a little bit more of that. So obviously there was like a huge transition, something that like sparked like changed you. |
| 1:14.3 | If I remember right, you were like living underneath a bridge. |
| 1:18.0 | I was living underneath the bridge in a place of town west or downtown Tulsa. |
| 1:24.3 | And that's just kind of where I called home. |
| 1:26.3 | It was the closest place from the hospital that I had |
| 1:28.4 | just AMAed myself out of. What does AMA mean? Against medical advice. Okay. All right. All right. A little bit |
| 1:36.4 | of a rebel. A little bit of a rebel. Okay. I like it. Yeah. I was in a, I got a, I got found by some |
| 1:42.4 | police officers in a part of Tulsa that was not friendly to be in, |
| 1:46.9 | just beaten. |
| 1:47.8 | Dude, how many times were you arrested over the years? |
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