Unlicensed Contractors

As a woman in the HVAC industry, competeing for leads is a long road. Over the last 10 years I've learned that alot of our competition is low cost unlicensed contractors. So, doing my due diligence, I have done reseach on the contractors that 'rank' higher than me on Thumbtack. To my surprise, they are not licensed even though they have been hired 100's of times on Thumbtack. My question is, how is that far to the ones who do?