Triple M Handyman Thrives on the Seacoast

It seems like handymen are part of a bygone era, like the ice delivery man (yeah, that used to be a thing when people literally had ice boxes for refrigerators). Finding someone for small but necessary jobs—like hanging a new door or ceiling fan, or dry rot repair—can be hard.  That hole in the marketplace inspired Matthew Martin Montgomery to launch Triple M Handyman in 2022 in the Seacoast, serving southern NH and Maine.

Montgomery learned the building trades from his father and other contractors starting at a young age. After college he had his own handyman company in Philadelphia for 10 years before moving to NH with his wife and kids. “In the city everyone has a handyman,” Montgomery says. “It’s like having a dentist.”

When arriving in NH, Montgomery and his wife worked at a KOA campground where he did maintenance and groundskeeping while his wife served as a general manager. “When we first moved to the area, I didn’t view it as a place where a handyman would thrive,” he says, explaining he’d always thought of New England as a DIY culture. “But that has proven to be wrong. There’s plenty of work up here for a handyman and that increased with COVID and the lack of availability of contractors.”

Montgomery says a lesson he has learned is to charge by the job, rather than by the hour. “There are so many things a handyman does and if you charge by the hour there’s no reward for the skill it takes to do a job,” he says. “Something might look easy but that’s only because you’ve had years of experience and skill.”

Montgomery says a customer relations online software system allows him to save time and money by screening potential customers’ needs. “We try to keep our communication to email and texts to streamline the process,” he says. “One thing I have been focused on is sending people to our website to fill out an estimate form.”

Montgomery, who is passing the skills he has learned over the years to his 15-year-old son, hopes to be able to hire people soon. For more information, visit triplemhandyman.com.