From Refinery Employee to Refining a Business: Brian Boswell on Grit & Growth | Ep 17

From Refinery Shift Work to Building a Multi-Entity Service Empire

Brian Boswell didn't follow the traditional business school playbook. After starting trade school as an electrician, he jumped into refinery shift work mid-program and stayed there for years while building businesses on the side. His entrepreneurial journey didn't start with a five-year plan-it started with a restaurant called Jacob's Well, where he learned quickly that he knew nothing about what he was doing. But that education was priceless.

"I think that first business taught me how business should work and how it shouldn't work," Brian explains. From that foundation, he pivoted into product innovation. While trying to solve a brick oven problem at Jacob's Well, he sketched out a griddle hack that could fit into a pellet grill and make pizzas in two to three minutes. That idea became Barbecue Hack, a product business that grew fast enough that by August 2020, Brian made the jump that every service business owner fears: he left his stable refinery income to run Barbecue Hack full-time, cutting his income 50-60% in the process.

The Pivot That Changed Everything

Barbecue Hack thrived through 2020 and 2021. Then came the post-COVID recession. "The floor just fell out," Brian recalls. Everything stopped selling. Rather than panic, he saw opportunity. In 2022, he started Reliable Dirt Works with $100,000, a truck, a trailer, and a Hydra Vac hydro excavator. It was capital-intensive, risky, and unclear. He spent 2022 and 2023 learning the excavation and water district management business, losing money but gaining traction. By 2024, a second water district contract hit. Revenue jumped 3x. He hired staff. He bought a mini excavator. He bought out his partners and created Boswell LLC.

Then in March 2025, he made the acquisition that transformed everything: Sunflower Plumbing. Suddenly, Reliable had its own residential-facing contractor, eliminating the constant hunt for plumbing work. Customers who called for plumbing discovered they also needed grading, gutter work, and water line locating. One customer became 4-5 revenue streams. By the end of 2025, revenue had grown another 2.5x.

What Brian Learned About Scaling Service Businesses

Brian's core conviction about customer satisfaction applies whether you're managing a plumbing crew or running excavation equipment: do clean work, show up on time, solve problems, and customers call you back. That repeatability and word-of-mouth from satisfied customers is the foundation of sustainable growth in service industries.

Looking ahead to 2026, Brian's focus has shifted from raw growth to operational efficiency. "Now that we've had a year into it, we can really understand what's working, when different services sell, and where we can market effectively throughout the year," he explains. This is the mark of a maturing business owner-one who's learned that fast growth without operational clarity is a liability, not an asset.

His final message to aspiring entrepreneurs is unvarnished: start your business on the side while keeping your job. Test your conviction. Navigate the inevitable forks in the road. Only take the full leap when you can't do both anymore. Because the leap is real-the stress, the sleepless nights, the weight of responsibility. But on the other side, there's the satisfaction of building something that provides good lives for your team and yourself.