Resident Review Founder Corey Chase Turns Hard-Won Home Service Lessons Into New Book, Why Risk It at All?

A former home service business owner shows contractors how to spot risk before a job starts, and how Resident Review helps put that thinking into practice.

FORT MYERS, FL, UNITED STATES, October 29, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Most contractors can name the job they wish they had turned down. The bathroom remodel that kept growing after the price was agreed. The homeowner who stopped answering the phone once the final invoice went out. The crawlspace nobody mentioned until a technician was already halfway into it. Corey Chase, founder and CEO of Resident Review, spent years running home service businesses and dealing with jobs exactly like these. His book, Why Risk It at All?, is what he took away from them, written down for the owners and operators coming up behind him.

Published in January 2026 by Palmetto Publishing, Why Risk It at All? How to Protect and Grow Your Home Service Business Through Conscious, Continuous Risk Management is a practical guide for the people who run plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, landscaping, cleaning and other home service companies. Chase works through the problems that eat into a home service business year after year: scope creep, payment disputes, property damage, crew safety and the harm one bad job can do to a company’s reputation. For each one, he sets out what an owner can actually do about it, from vetting customers before committing a crew to writing contracts that hold up when a job goes sideways.

Running through the whole book is the idea that risk management works best as a habit, practiced on every lead and every job. Chase walks readers through the red flags that tend to show up early, on the first phone call, during the walkthrough or in the conversation about deposits, and shows how owners can train themselves and their teams to catch them before they turn into lost time and lost money.

“I came from owning home service businesses, and a lot of what’s in this book I learned the hard way,” said Chase. “Nobody hands you a playbook for the customer who won’t pay or the job that keeps growing. I wanted to give other owners what I wish I’d had: a clear way to see the risk in a job before you’re standing in someone’s kitchen, and the confidence to walk away when it doesn’t add up.”

The book arrives as the trades continue to grow. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment in construction and extraction occupations to grow faster than the average for all occupations, with about 587,000 openings a year on average through 2035. More work and more new business owners entering the trades also mean more chances to take on the wrong job, and Chase makes the case that the businesses built to last are the ones that look hard at every new customer before saying yes.

The same thinking sits behind Resident Review. Homeowners can research a contractor in minutes, reading reviews and checking licenses before they ever pick up the phone. Contractors have had very little to go on in return. On Resident Review, verified home service businesses leave 1 to 5 star reviews on customers they have actually worked with, and those reviews are visible only to other registered businesses, never to the public. Every business on the platform is verified through a third-party process. Before accepting a job, a contractor can see what other local businesses experienced with that customer and check property details such as the home’s year built, square footage, heating and cooling, with a built-in CRM for tracking leads and keeping notes on customers for the next visit.

Chase describes it as the first business feedback loop for home service companies. A contractor finishes a job and comes away with a real experience of that customer, and that experience becomes useful context for the next business the customer calls. Over time, the honest experiences of working businesses add up to the kind of information Chase spent years wishing he had.

“The book explains the thinking, and Resident Review gives contractors a way to act on it every single day,” Chase said. “Homeowners can look you up before they hire you. You should be able to know something about them before you send your crew into their home.”

Why Risk It at All? has found readers well beyond the United States, including a growing number in Germany, and is available in paperback and ebook from major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple Books. Resident Review is headquartered in Fort Myers, Florida, and serves construction and home service businesses in all 50 states, with a free trial that takes minutes to set up.

Emma Sivess
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Written By: EIN Presswire