Where It Started
Cory's great-grandfather homesteaded the land in Idaho. Every fence post, irrigation line, and outbuilding was built by family hands over generations. Then the Teton Dam flooded. The government took the property citing wildlife conservation, and just like that, everything his family had built was gone.
His dad responded the only way he knew how: he figured it out. Working job after job that taught him concrete, framing, electrical, plumbing, and finish work, he put those skills to use. He took a literal commercial chicken coop and rebuilt it into a livable home. Then found a rundown fixer and turned it into something real. Eventually he built the family home from the ground up, not one trade subbed out. Cory grew up working alongside all of that, not watching. That's where he learned that a home is a system, and how you maintain it determines how long it lasts and what it costs you.
Learning Systems the Hard Way
Growing up farming for his cousins wasn't just physical work. It was an education in diagnosing problems and reverse engineering fixes with whatever was available. When equipment breaks in the middle of a season, you don't wait for someone else. You look at it, think through how it's supposed to work, and figure it out. That mentality turned out to be the skill that makes maintenance make sense. Looking at a home system and seeing what it needs before it becomes a problem comes naturally when you were raised to think that way.
Spotting the Pattern
After years in sales and eventually as an account executive at a tech company, Cory spent thousands of conversations with home service business owners across the country. And what he found made him sick.
The business model for most home service companies isn't built around fixing your problem. It's built around finding the most expensive version of your problem. A technician shows up, spends ten minutes looking around, and suddenly your perfectly serviceable furnace needs to be replaced for $8,000. Your water heater that just needed a flush is now a liability. Your AC that needed a coil cleaning is apparently on its last legs.
They're not lying to protect you. They're trained to upsell. A $10,000 system replacement is a bigger ticket than a $200 tune-up, and their commission reflects that. The homeowner, who has no way to know what's actually true, ends up paying for it every single time.
When Cory reported what happened on a company work trip to HR, he was let go a week before Christmas. His wife didn't hesitate. Take what you know, she told him. The work ethic, his dad's knowledge, everything learned about running a business, and the pattern spotted in the industry. Build something of your own.
Why Planned Exists
Quotes vary wildly from contractor to contractor. Homeowners have no way to know what's fair. And the whole system is stacked against the person who just wants their home taken care of without being cornered into a $15,000 decision they didn't see coming.
Planned was built to be the opposite of that. Set pricing you can see before we ever show up. A defined seasonal checklist that every technician follows, every visit, no exceptions. Real maintenance done right by people who actually know what they're doing. No service call fees on top of labor. No manufactured urgency. No pressure to replace what just needs cleaning.
Cory's family lived by a simple philosophy: you take care of what you have, and it lasts. A furnace that gets serviced runs for years longer. A water heater that gets flushed doesn't fail early. Gutters that get cleaned don't destroy your foundation. Maintenance is cheaper than replacement, every time, and the only reason more people don't do it is because no one made it easy.
If you just moved into a brand new home, right now is the best time to start. Get on a plan before anything has a chance to fall behind, and that home will reward you for it. And if it's been years since anyone looked at your systems, stop waiting. Every year that slips by without proper maintenance accelerates whatever issues are already developing. The best time to start was years ago. The second best time is now.
“That's not a marketing line. That's how I was raised to do business.”