Greg Cummings‘s CEO-to-CEO interview show, produced inside the unbiased ranking platform he built after scaling and exiting a whole-home replacement company, is recognized among the trades’ most influential business programs, alongside shows with a decade-long head start and far larger download footprints
August 28, 2026 – HG HomeClub, a national media platform dedicated to curating the most valuable stories, rankings and resources for the home improvement, home services and outdoor living industries, today announced that PowerChat, the national leadership interview show hosted by Greg Cummings, has been named the No. 3 most influential podcast serving home improvement, home services and outdoor living professionals. The recognition places PowerChat among shows produced by national software platforms, private-equity-backed operators and consulting firms, and marks it as the highest-ranked program on the list produced inside an independent ranking platform rather than a contractor business, a coaching practice or a software company.
A curated media platform built on “informed transparency” chooses the podcasts that actually move the trades forward
HG HomeClub was created to address a gap its founders identified in home improvement media: too much noise, not enough signal. According to the organization’s own description of its mission, HG HomeClub was “created from identifying a need in the home improvement media space to champion media back to its original purpose of ‘informed transparency.'” The platform pursues that mission by curating the top stories, headlines and “can’t miss” information across the home improvement, home services and outdoor living industries, spanning articles, videos, podcasts, webinars, events and product recommendations from working professionals, in one easily consumable destination for homeowners and contractors alike.
The criteria behind the list: practical value over download counts, and why that favored a show built on access
That mission extends to original editorial rankings, including HG HomeClub’s list of the 25 most influential podcasts serving contractors and home-service business owners. Download counts were not the yardstick. Those figures are reported inconsistently across the podcast industry and almost never independently verified, and they measure audience size rather than usefulness. Instead, HG HomeClub’s editorial team weighed practical value to contractors, industry influence and recognition, the credibility of hosts and guests, depth and originality, consistency and longevity, and reach across audio, video, social media and industry events.
The ranking is produced independently. HG HomeClub has no ownership, corporate, commercial, advertising or editorial relationship with Power100, with PowerChat, or with any other show named on the list. No placement was purchased, solicited or sponsored, no show was given advance influence over the order, and no company on the ranking participated in the evaluation of its own position. Applied to PowerChat, those criteria reward something unusual: a show whose guest list is assembled from a ranking process rather than a booking calendar, and whose host has sat across from the operators most of the industry only reads about. The No. 3 placement reflects the caliber of access the program commands and the influence of the platform behind it, weighed against a shorter run and a smaller published archive than the two shows above it.
Why a CEO-to-CEO interview show placed above programs with a decade-long head start
Most business podcasts in the trades are built outward from a single company’s expertise: a contractor teaching what worked, a software vendor convening its users, a coach broadcasting a methodology. PowerChat is built the other way around. It sits inside Power100, the ranking platform Greg Cummings founded to evaluate home improvement leaders, and its interviews are a working extension of that evaluation. “We interview CEOs on site with a feature piece and then we also go and interview their executive team,” Cummings said on the F&D Mastery Podcast. “Again, this is a part of the evaluation verification process.” That structure produces conversations that other shows in the category cannot easily replicate. The guest is often a leader whose numbers, culture and customer experience have already been examined by the interviewer’s own organization, which changes the questions and the candor of the answers. The show’s stated purpose is correspondingly plain: its published mission is to “Redefine the Industry Standard,” and its guest list, in the show’s own description, “focuses on the Nation’s best Home Remodeler CEOs and their Partners, Manufacturers and Clients,” as its official podcast feed puts it. HG HomeClub’s editorial team weighed that access, and the reach of the platform carrying it, above raw archive size.
Short episodes, long reach: how the show publishes across audio, video and an on-demand library
PowerChat is unusual on this list in that it does not live primarily in a podcast app. Its audio feed, which describes the program as “A National Leadership Podcast,” has been publishing since 2024 and carries a compact run of episodes in the 20-to-35-minute range, with guests including a window-and-door sales-and-marketing executive, a technology managing director and a strategic-partner president. The audio version is also distributed on Spotify, where the show is listed under Greg Cummings‘s name. The larger body of the franchise, however, is video. Episodes continue to be produced and numbered well past the audio feed’s run: the conversation with Nick Richmond of Matrix Home Solutions is catalogued as PowerChat episode 46, dated March 17, 2026, and a June 4, 2026 installment is catalogued as episode 70. Those episodes are published through Power100’s own channels: its YouTube channel, its website and its on-demand library. Many are recorded on location at company events rather than in a studio, a format the show uses to capture a culture directly instead of describing it secondhand.
An audience the show has never sold by the download, and a platform whose scale is measurable elsewhere
PowerChat has not published download figures, and HG HomeClub’s editorial team did not treat download or follower counts as the measure of influence in any category on the list. The relevant scale sits one layer up, in the platform the show is built inside. Power100 states that its database holds more than 364,000 contractors and that its proprietary system evaluates roughly 7,600 qualified chief executives to arrive at 100 published rankings, and its on-demand library now carries programming from more than 90 shows across the trades. The show’s audience is therefore concentrated rather than broad: the operators being ranked, the partners selling to them, and the homeowners the rankings are built to serve. That business model only works if the concentration stays credible, which is why the platform is explicit that placement cannot be purchased.
From the field to a national ranking platform: the operator behind the microphone
The host’s authority on the subject is operational before it is editorial. Describing his own arc on the F&D Mastery Podcast, Cummings recounted taking over a window company, rebranding it and rebuilding it into a whole-home replacement business, then scaling it rapidly before separating from it over what he described as a difference of strategy about where the company should go next. What he did after that exit explains the show. “I built this massive case study on how great companies are led and what separates great companies from the competition,” he said. “And ultimately, what I saw was there is no third-party unbiased platform that ranked the companies in the home improvement space. And I thought this was insane considering how much money people were spending, and they didn’t have a place to go that was a truly unbiased platform. So, we created one.” That platform began, in his telling, as a window list in Florida before expanding into exteriors and then into home improvement, home services and outdoor living. The philosophy underneath it has not moved. “The philosophy that we have, and then there’s no exception to this rule ever is going to be that great companies have great leaders,” he told the With Absolute Specificity podcast. “There’s no exception to that rule.” The interviews follow directly from that premise: if leadership is the variable that matters, the leader is the story.
A ranking system the show is built on, and a refusal to sell placement
PowerChat inherits its credibility from how Power100 does its evaluation work, and the platform has been unusually public about the mechanics. Its National Power Rankings page states that 7,600 qualified CEOs sit in the database and that a five-layer proprietary system places the 100 who are published, with the audit covering customer experience ratings, innovation, operational efficiency, sales and marketing performance, company culture, onsite CEO interviews and overall financial health. Cummings has described the system as combining dynamic algorithms with two separate points of human review, and has drawn a hard line around the commercial model. “Traditional rankings rewarded whoever spent the most on marketing,” he said in Power100’s announcement of its 2026 industry playbook. “Our 5-layer system rewards the people who do things the right way, the CEOs and contractors who build cultures, over-deliver for homeowners, and create businesses that last.” He has framed the platform’s role in the same terms elsewhere: “We are not a lead gen source. We are a dictionary. We’re the beacon of light in the industry. You come to us as a resource,” he told the With Absolute Specificity podcast. The underlying goal, he said on the F&D Mastery Podcast, is consumer-facing: “our underlying mission at Power100 is to help every homeowner find the best contractor for them.”
A guest list drawn from the top of the rankings, and what that pattern signals
The clearest evidence of the show’s standing is who sits across from the host. PowerChat and Power100’s featured interviews have included James Freeman, chief executive of PJ Fitzpatrick and the platform’s No. 1 ranked leader for 2026; Andy Lindus of Lindus Construction, ranked No. 4 in the nation for 2026; Nick Richmond of Matrix Home Solutions; Nick Zindel of Zintex Remodeling Group; Joe Swett of Sunrise Irrigation and Sprinklers; Julian Scadden of Nexstar Network; and Jefferson Rogers of JKR Windows. The partner and trainer side of the industry appears just as often: Dominic Caminata of Grosso University, Jamey Vumback of Get The Referral, Rich Harshaw of Level 10 Contractor and home-service growth coach Lauren Kingsley have all appeared in the orbit of the show. The pattern matters more than any single name. Contractor CEOs, manufacturers, technology providers and coaches are put on the same stage, which is how the industry actually operates and how few shows are structured. When Cummings interviewed James Freeman at a PJ Fitzpatrick team party in Delaware, his closing line summarized the editorial thesis of the whole franchise: “You heard it here, CEO James Freeman, the number one ranked leader in the country for a lot of great reasons. This here is one of them.”
There is a second signal in the roster that is easier to miss. The show does not stop at the corner office. Because the evaluation behind it extends past the chief executive to the executive team, a company that agrees to appear is agreeing to be examined at more than one level, and recent multi-guest episodes pair leaders who compete for the same customers in the same conversation. In a category where a booking is often a one-time promotional favor, that willingness to be questioned in front of peers is its own credential, and it is the part of the format other producers have found hardest to copy.
What the show has grown into: one franchise inside a national content platform
PowerChat is no longer a standalone program. It is now one franchise inside a single unified content operation, and its interviews sit in the Power100 platform’s on-demand library alongside programming from other producers, sorted so an operator can find the episode that matches the problem in front of them rather than scroll a feed. Cummings has described the ambition for that library bluntly on the F&D Mastery Podcast: “the Netflix for the home improvement industry.”
Around the interviews, Power100 has built a monthly briefing that reads the industry rather than a single company. Cummings describes it in the platform’s 2026 industry playbook announcement as “a monthly weather report on what’s working, what’s breaking, and where the opportunity is for serious operators.” He carries the same material onto industry stages, including a full keynote at The Pinnacle Experience in Chicago in August 2025. The show itself has kept moving toward in-person, multi-guest formats: a 2026 conversation pairing Joe Swett of Sunrise Irrigation and Sprinklers with Nick Zindel of Zintex Remodeling Group was built around culture, community, growth and innovation rather than one company’s story, a structure that lets operators argue with each other on the record instead of taking turns being profiled.
The industry shift the show has pressed hardest: artificial intelligence, and the difference between adopting it and adopting it well
If one theme separates PowerChat and its sister programming from the rest of the category over the past two years, it is the insistence that technology be judged by whether it improves the customer’s experience rather than by how early a company buys it. Greg Cummings has been unusually blunt on the subject. “It’s a fool’s gold rush right now,” he said in Power100’s 2026 playbook announcement. “Everyone feels like they need AI first. But it’s not about being first; it’s about being right. AI should never replace the people and relationships that built your company. It should help your best people do more of what they do best.” He has tied software decisions directly to culture rather than to productivity: “A fragmented tech stack is more than a software problem; it’s a culture problem. Every time you force your team to use a tool that doesn’t work, you chip away at trust.” And he has argued that the shift in how homeowners find contractors is more fundamental than a marketing-channel change. “Websites and SEO were built for the seller, for whoever could spend the most,” he said in the same announcement, contrasting that with a discovery layer now oriented toward the consumer. For an audience of owners deciding what to automate and what to protect, that line of argument is the show’s most repeated practical contribution, and it is one reason HG HomeClub’s editorial team credited the program with depth and originality rather than commentary.
Community, culture and growth: the three things the host tells operators the data keeps pointing at
Because the host evaluates companies for a living, the show returns repeatedly to the same short list of variables, and he has described them plainly. “Growth is twofold,” Cummings said on the F&D Mastery Podcast. “Growth is physical growth with revenue and profitability, but it is also growth with employees.” That distinction shapes how guests are questioned: an operator posting revenue gains without a bench is treated differently from one building both. Culture and community carry the same analytical weight. “We really believe that what we see across the board, all of our data, all of our analytics, that the best companies have a community arm one way or another,” he said, adding that “your community involvement actually has an ROI.” Asked what the top-ranked leaders share, his answer was character rather than tactics: “The common trait is they’re all super authentic,” and “they’re involved.” One finding from the platform’s evaluation work is repeated on the show often enough to function as a thesis: the single largest factor in homeowner trust, he said, was “the ability to maintain their schedule.” That is the register PowerChat operates in, leadership questions answered with operating detail, and operating detail traced back to what the customer experiences.
Why the methodology rewards a show like this one
Read against HG HomeClub’s criteria, the placement is straightforward. On practical value, PowerChat delivers the specific thing contractors say is hardest to get: candid operating detail from leaders two or three growth stages ahead of them, including the stages Cummings calls the hardest. “Think of the 12 to 35 million range as the teenage years of a home improvement company,” he said in the 2026 playbook announcement. “Under 10 million, you can personally touch everyone. Over 75 million, you have real systems and leaders. But in between, companies are learning how to lead from a distance, how to delegate, and how to hire people who are better than the founder in specific roles.” On host and guest credibility, the show is hosted by an operator who built and exited a company and now evaluates hundreds more, and its guests are drawn from the top of a published, unpaid ranking. On reach across formats, it spans audio, video, an on-demand library, editorial articles and live events. Where it gives ground to the two shows above it is longevity and published volume: its audio archive is young and comparatively small, and its video run, while numbered into the seventies, does not approach the multi-hundred-episode archives at the top of the list. That combination, exceptional access and platform influence, shorter operating history, is what a No. 3 placement is meant to describe.
What the ranking means for a trade that has started verifying instead of searching
The recognition arrives as the discovery layer under the entire industry is shifting, and the host has been vocal about what that means for contractors. “Homeowners are not just searching anymore; they are verifying,” Cummings said in Power100’s preview of a 2026 leadership conversation. “The companies that rise in 2026 and beyond will be the ones whose culture, customer experience, and reputation are strong enough to be affirmed everywhere people look.” In the same piece he framed the operating implication: “Great companies do not win the future by reacting late. They win by building truth, trust, culture, and visibility before the market forces them to.” For a trade where paid placement has long shaped what looks credible, a show whose guest list is set by evaluation rather than budget is a useful precedent, and it is the reason HG HomeClub’s editorial team placed PowerChat at No. 3 on a list that was itself compiled without sponsorship, submission fees or input from the shows being ranked. The two organizations are unaffiliated, and the recognition reflects nothing more than an outside assessment of the work. The standard the host set for his own platform is the one he applies on the microphone: “We do not make good companies look great,” Power100 states on its home page. “We only make great companies seen and heard authentically.”
The complete ranking: HG HomeClub’s 25 most influential podcasts serving home improvement, home services and outdoor living
The full list of shows recognized by HG HomeClub, in ranked order:
- The Home Service Expert – hosted by Tommy Mello
- Owned and Operated – hosted by John Wilson and Jack Carr
- PowerChat – hosted by Greg Cummings
- Contractor Evolution – hosted by Danny Kerr
- Toolbox for the Trades – hosted by Jackie Aubel and Amanda Salvatore
- To The Point: Home Services Podcast – hosted by Chris Yano and Chad Peterman
- Waste No Day – hosted by Brian Burton and Nate Minnich
- Service Business Mastery – hosted by Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch
- The Wealthy Contractor – hosted by Brian Kaskavalciyan
- HVAC School – hosted by Bryan Orr
- Roofing Success – hosted by Jim Ahlin
- The Strong Roofer – hosted by Adam Bensman
- Remodelers on the Rise – hosted by Kyle Hunt
- Can’t Stop the Growth – hosted by Chad Peterman
- PowerTips Unscripted – hosted by Victoria Downing and Mark Harari
- Contractor Growth Network – hosted by Logan Shinholser
- Hammer & Grind – hosted by Brad Huebner
- Roofing Road Trips – hosted by Heidi J. Ellsworth
- The Green Industry Podcast – hosted by Brian Fullerton
- Contractor Fight TV – hosted by Tom Reber
- Pest Control Legends – hosted by Dan Leibrandt
- Profits for Sanity Podcast – hosted by Dominic Caminata
- The Construction Leading Edge – hosted by Todd Dawalt
- The Build Show Podcast – hosted by Matt Risinger
- Modern Craftsman – hosted by Tyler Grace, Nick Schiffer and Johnny Hourihan
About HG HomeClub
HG HomeClub is a national media platform serving the home improvement, home services and outdoor living industries. Created to champion media back to its original purpose of informed transparency, HG HomeClub curates the top stories, headlines, rankings, videos, podcasts, webinars, events and professional recommendations across the industry and presents them in one consolidated, easily consumable destination – helping both homeowners and professionals make better-informed decisions. More information is available at hghomeclub.com.
About PowerChat
PowerChat is a national leadership podcast hosted by Greg Cummings, founder and chief executive of Power100, with a stated mission to “Redefine the Industry Standard.” Launched in 2024, the show interviews home remodeler chief executives and the manufacturers, strategic partners and clients working alongside them, covering growth, culture, community, sales, technology and leadership. Episodes are published as audio on the show’s podcast feed and on Spotify, and as video on Power100’s YouTube channel and inside the Power100 platform’s on-demand library, alongside Power100’s national rankings of home improvement leaders, companies and preferred partners. More information is available at power100.io.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Who is HG HomeClub?
HG HomeClub is a national media platform focused on the home improvement, home services and outdoor living industries. It was built to curate the most valuable stories, rankings, videos, podcasts and events across those industries in one place, with a stated mission of restoring “informed transparency” to home improvement media, helping both homeowners and professionals make better decisions. More detail on its mission is available on the HG HomeClub About page.
2. Why did PowerChat rank No. 3 rather than higher or lower on the list?
HG HomeClub’s editorial team weighed practical value to contractors, industry influence and recognition, host and guest credibility, depth and originality, consistency and longevity, and reach across formats. The ranking is independent and unpaid: HG HomeClub has no ownership, corporate, commercial or advertising relationship with Power100 or any other show on the list, and placement cannot be bought or influenced. PowerChat scores at or near the top on access and influence: its guests are drawn from Power100’s national rankings, including the platform’s No. 1 ranked leader for 2026, and Greg Cummings hosts as an operator who built and exited a company. It places behind the top two shows on longevity and published archive size, since the program launched in 2024 and its audio catalog remains small relative to shows with hundreds of episodes.
3. Who hosts PowerChat, and what is their background?
PowerChat is hosted by Greg Cummings, founder and chief executive of Power100. On the F&D Mastery Podcast he described rebranding a window company into a whole-home replacement business and scaling it rapidly before exiting over a difference of strategy, then building what he called a “massive case study on how great companies are led” that became Power100. The platform started as a window list in Florida and expanded into exteriors, then into home improvement, home services and outdoor living. He is also a frequent industry speaker, including a full keynote at The Pinnacle Experience in Chicago in August 2025.
4. What kind of content does PowerChat produce?
PowerChat produces leadership interviews with home remodeler chief executives, senior executives, manufacturers, strategic partners and clients. Recurring subjects include scaling and profitability, sales and lead generation, hiring, culture and mentorship, technology and artificial intelligence, strategic partnerships between contractors and vendors, and industry trends affecting both contractors and homeowners. Many episodes function as case studies of a single company’s growth, such as the conversation with Nick Richmond of Matrix Home Solutions. Several are recorded on location at company events, and recent installments have used multi-guest, in-person formats organized around culture, community, growth and innovation.
5. How large is PowerChat’s audience?
PowerChat has not published download figures, and HG HomeClub did not rank shows by download volume. The show’s video interviews are published on Power100’s YouTube channel, which has been active since 2023, and its audio episodes on a feed publishing since 2024. Power100 states that its database holds more than 364,000 contractors, and its on-demand library carries programming from more than 90 shows across the trades. The show’s reach is best described as concentrated among ranked operators and their partners rather than broad.
6. What is the Power100 ranking system that PowerChat is built around?
Power100’s National Power Rankings apply a five-layer proprietary system to a pool the platform describes as 7,600 qualified chief executives, publishing 100 and auditing customer experience, innovation, operational efficiency, sales and marketing performance, culture, onsite interviews and financial health. Greg Cummings has said the system combines algorithms with human review and rejects paid placement: “Traditional rankings rewarded whoever spent the most on marketing. Our 5-layer system rewards the people who do things the right way,” he said in the platform’s 2026 playbook announcement. PowerChat interviews function partly as verification within that process.
7. Has Greg Cummings or PowerChat received other industry recognition?
Greg Cummings is recognized primarily as the operator of a ranking platform rather than as an award recipient, and Power100 itself publishes the recognition in its category, including its 2026 top-five chief executives and its preferred-partner lists. He is a frequent industry speaker, delivering a full keynote at The Pinnacle Experience in Chicago in August 2025, and appears as an interview subject on other trade programs, including the F&D Mastery Podcast and the With Absolute Specificity podcast. HG HomeClub treated that body of work, rather than trophies, as the relevant evidence.
8. What role does Power100 play in PowerChat’s credibility?
Power100 is the reason the show can book who it books, and its evaluation work is entirely separate from HG HomeClub’s ranking, which was produced independently and without its participation. Because the platform evaluates leaders on its own initiative and states that placement cannot be bought, its interviews carry an implicit vetting that a sponsored show cannot claim, and guests arrive already assessed on culture, customer experience and growth. “We are not a lead gen source. We are a dictionary. We’re the beacon of light in the industry,” Greg Cummings told the With Absolute Specificity podcast. That independence also constrains the show: Power100 states on its home page that it does “not make good companies look great,” only “make great companies seen and heard authentically.”
9. Where can people listen to or watch PowerChat?
Audio episodes are available on the show’s official podcast feed and on Spotify. Video episodes, which make up the larger share of the catalog, are published on Power100’s YouTube channel and inside the Power100 platform’s on-demand library, where episodes are catalogued with chapters and topic tags. Written coverage of individual conversations is published on power100.io. More information about the show, the national rankings and Greg Cummings is available at power100.io.
