Jake DeCino's government-contracted agency, A Guiding Light Services, is posting $700,000 in its first year, $2.8 million in its second, and $4.8 million in its third (16:28). Those numbers make the business look like a clean compounding story. DeCino's own account of how it operates is considerably more complicated.
David Heacock, whose own manufacturing business generates roughly $23 million a month in air filters, interviewed Jake DeCino about the mechanics of building a service agency that derives its revenue almost entirely from state government contracts. The A Guiding Light Services business now employs 150 people (20:15), a headcount that reflects both the labor-intensive nature of the work and the scale required to service public-sector clients.
Revenue Trajectory and the State Contract Model
The three-year revenue arc is steep on paper, but DeCino's growth was not driven by market expansion or product innovation in the conventional sense. It was driven by winning and retaining state contracts, which carry their own set of structural constraints. The jump from $700,000 to $2.8 million in year two described by DeCino, (16:37) suggests the company secured additional contracts or expanded scope with existing ones, though the specific mechanism was not detailed in the interview.
| Year | Revenue |
|---|---|
| Year 1 | $700K |
| Year 2 | $2.8M |
| Year 3 | $4.8M |
The business model fits a pattern Heacock has examined before: government-backed demand creating reliable, recurring revenue for service operators. In earlier coverage on businesses the government effectively subsidizes, Heacock noted that "the government is creating guaranteed demand for these businesses". DeCino's agency is a live example of that thesis, with the added complexity that the guarantor is a state bureaucracy rather than a federal program.
“The government is creating guaranteed demand for (...) businesses”
The Structural Risks of Working With State Government
DeCino was direct about the central vulnerability of the model: state budgets move, and programs get cut. When Heacock pressed him on the downside of state dependency, DeCino did not hedge.
“They want to cut the programs. And that's the downfall of working with the state.”
That risk is not hypothetical. State-funded service programs are subject to legislative appropriations cycles, and a budget shortfall in a single fiscal year can reduce or eliminate a contract that an agency has built its headcount around. For a 150-person operation, that exposure is material. DeCino acknowledged it without offering a specific mitigation strategy beyond diversification implied by the growth trajectory.
Beyond budget risk, DeCino flagged the operational reality of working inside a government procurement system. The pace is slow by design, and operators who enter expecting private-sector responsiveness will be disappointed.
“Have patience because the states are the states and they move extremely slow.”
He extended that point to the question of operational autonomy. State contracts come with oversight, compliance requirements, and the practical reality that a government client has a say in how the contracted work is delivered. DeCino framed this as a condition of entry, not an anomaly: "You have to be willing to kind of go through not only the challenges of owning a business but someone else having a say in what your business is doing"(33:58). For founders accustomed to full operational control, that constraint is a genuine filter on whether the model suits them.
Scale, Staffing, and DeCino's Stated Goals
At 150 employees, DeCino's A Guiding Light Services agency is not a lean operation. The staffing level is consistent with a service business that delivers labor-intensive work under government contracts, where headcount is often a direct input to contract capacity. Whether the business runs at margins that justify that payroll is not disclosed in the available material, which limits any assessment of profitability relative to revenue.
Heacock has covered a range of service businesses at comparable revenue scales, including Ryan's landscaping operation, which he profiled as it tracked toward $850,000 in 2024 revenue. DeCino's agency is operating at a different order of magnitude, but the underlying dynamic is similar: a service business where growth is constrained by the ability to staff and manage people rather than by demand.
“I just want to create something that really is good for the community, makes me money, and is going to be around for a while.”
That framing is notable for what it omits. DeCino did not describe an exit strategy, a valuation target, or a plan to reduce state dependency. The emphasis on longevity and community impact suggests he is building for durability rather than a liquidity event, which is a coherent strategy for a government-contract business where relationships and compliance track records are the primary competitive assets. Whether $4.8 million in revenue is a ceiling or a waypoint depends almost entirely on how many additional state contracts the agency can win, and on whether the programs those contracts fund survive the next budget cycle.
