Byron Wade

Writing

Notes from building products and running a service business. Design systems, field ops, and the software that has to work out in the truck.

2026

  1. 19 min read

    Nexstar Is Teaching Plumbing Companies to Win the Invoice and Lose the Customer

    After ten years in plumbing, two master licenses, owning a company, and working inside three shops, I believe the industry’s obsession with average ticket is trading lifetime trust for a one-day sales number.

    • Plumbing
    • Customer experience
    • Sales
    • Operations

  2. 14 min read

    What Service Businesses Actually Need From Software

    Contractors do not need a larger feature checklist. They need software that protects the chain from first call to collected payment, keeps context attached to the job, and makes operational failure visible early.

    • Field service
    • Product
    • Operations
    • Customer experience

  3. 13 min read

    A Design System Has to Be Enforceable or It Is Just Documentation

    Tokens, components, accessibility rules, and motion principles only become a system when products inherit them automatically. AI-generated interfaces make that enforcement more important, not less.

    • Design systems
    • UI
    • Product engineering
    • Accessibility

2025

  1. 14 min read

    Why I’m Building Thorbis: Field-Service Software Should Understand the Whole Business

    Thorbis did not start as a feature list. It started with the operational failures I lived through in plumbing: lost context, weak job costing, missed calls, expensive seats, and software that never sees the whole company.

    • Thorbis
    • Field service
    • Product
    • Operations

2024

  1. 12 min read

    Seven Engineering Lessons From Building Software for People Who Work in Trucks

    Field-service software is used with one hand, weak signal, a customer watching, and real money attached to every mistake. Those constraints change how the product should be designed, modeled, secured, and measured.

    • Field service
    • Product engineering
    • Performance
    • Mobile

  2. 14 min read

    $2.4 Million in Revenue and Still Failing: What My Plumbing Company Taught Me About Growth

    I grew Wade's Plumbing & Septic to 13 employees and $2.4 million in annual sales, then learned the hardest business lesson of my life: revenue can hide a company that is already running out of cash.

    • Plumbing
    • Operations
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Leadership