CEOs, Michael Aerondosh with McVay Plumbing and Jason Daugherty of Mister Sewer

McVay Plumbing and HVAC Company
Servicing Allegheny County, Butler County Including Areas of Beaver, Armstrong, and Westmoreland Counties!McVay Plumbing Heating & Cooling is Western Pennsylvania’s premier provider for all your plumbing, heating, and cooling needs — including sewer line repair/replacement and drain clearing! We are the original pioneer of trenchless sewer lining, and we continue to embrace the latest innovations in home services to keep you comfortable in your home 365 days a year. Our team is well-equipped to handle all your plumbing and HVAC needs, from leaky faucets to broken heating and cooling systems. We offer a comprehensive selection of residential and commercial services, giving you the assurance and satisfaction you deserve.

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Hey and welcome man. This isthe CEOs U Should Know Podcast. I'm
your host, Johnny Hart. Well, let's say hello to Jason Dougherty and
Mike Aaron, Josha McVeigh Plumbing,Heating and Cooling company. Guys, thank
you for joining me morning, Thankyou, good morning, Thank you for
having us. All Right, Sothe big news is you merged. What
does that mean? How did thishappen? What's going on? We're gonna
take two top plumbing and drank cleaningcompanies and merge them together and be a

(00:27):
powerhouse for Pittsburgh. You're the bigboys, now, that's right. So
what does that mean for the peopleof Pittsburgh who need your services? More
efficiency, faster service overall? Ithink that you know where you're winning.
Winning power couple here get written forme, all right. So yeah,

(00:48):
what it means for the end useris, man, it's it's big.
We cross all bridges. We usuallyin Pittsburgh you get locked up on your
side of town, and we're hereto cross all bridges. We've got one
hundred plus employees now to better servethe community and really take it to absolutely
okay, absolutely, So how longhas this merger been in the works about

(01:10):
a year. Okay, how didit start? What? Who came up
the with the idea? We kindof crossed the pass organically, and I
think that we're both in the sametrades. And sometimes you run into other
plumbers out there in the Pittsburgh region, whether it's people getting second opinions or
UM just found it it's better tokind of get to know each other.

(01:30):
So you didn't know each other priorto the merger, No, we did
not. Okay, so let's gowith Jason first. What's your background?
Um, I grew up in theconstruction trade. My father was a bricklayer
in Florida. We moved here anduh I worked with him since I was
a little kid. I was alwaysinfatuated with you know, kind of Tonka
trucks, and started mixing mortar forhim, carrying block and learned hard work.

(01:53):
Moved my way through high school witha disinterest in college, and really
just saw something in the trade.Aids, got into the union and the
labors Union in the city of Pittsburghand the elevators Union, got to know
carpentry, electrical, started doing someremodeling, and then really found avoid in
plumbing and specifically and sewer and draincleaning. You know, there's Pittsburgh's an

(02:16):
old region and old market in thesense you have terra cotta pipes and cast
iron pipes, and you know,the last thing somebody wants is that awful
material coming up in their basement.How many years did you get your hands
dirty before you decided to become goinginto management. Well, when I started,
mister sewer, I saw it wasan up and coming time for the

(02:39):
trench list business, whereas people weredigging up pipes and there was other options
in better tools to fix the pipes. So I started off by actually excavating
for other plumbers in the business andfound that, ay, you know,
there's a lot of need for thisand to build a business specifically around dreins

(03:00):
is something that I think Pittsburgh reallyneeded. All right, Mike, same
question to you. Yeah, gotinto HVACT over twenty years ago. Family
owned business. Plumbing was a newventure for me about seven years ago.
So how you both are from,Like, you know, you came here
from Florida, but you guys arereally Pittsburghers. Yeah, absolutely, in

(03:23):
Pittsburgh's plumbing is fairly unique. Iknow, I didn't want to go to
the Pittsburgh potty right away, butI gotta find out. I'm sure you've
seen quite a few really crazy arrangements, right, Oh yeah, elevated thrones
in the basement walls, you know, just open top up into the world.

(03:45):
In fact, when I bought myhouse in Chippewa, I had a
Pittsburgh potty. It didn't know itfor the first seven years that I because
it was it was boarded up.And then when I was you know kind
of like, oh, I wonderwhat's underneath the steps. There's the Pittsburgh
there's the throne. Yeah, they'regood for doing laundry. Well, you

(04:06):
know, but you know what wasthe reason behind the Pittsburgh party, Because
you know, somebody had to goto the mill and came back and I
guess you had to clean up downstairs. Is that the I'd imagine. I
think they just decided that was theeasiest place in the home to add a
toilet and an unfinished basement. Youknow, most basements are unfinished, don't
have any really walls, cinder block, you know, so maybe yeah,

(04:28):
the coal miner or the steelworker forthat matter, came home and all right,
I couldn't help myself. I hadto bring up the Pittsburgh potty.
But let's get back to the actualmerger. So what do you think the
advantage is of your merging? Whatwhen it comes to the people. What
hasn't made a difference right away?Have you seen a difference? Absolutely?

(04:50):
The huge difference for us is theshared resources to this business. When you
get into plumbing, you get intoheating and air truck's location of people.
That's how we provide better, fasterservice and offer a fair rate. Okay,
so having Pittsburgh north east south andpeople located over the entire greater Pittsburgh

(05:12):
areas really really helped us out beingresourceful for our customers. Did you see
that advantage almost right away? Immediatelyimmediately there's there's a day I can picture
right now. It happened that oneof their expensive tools on the south side
of town for sewar and drain workbroke and we actually had a tool in
a vehicle close by on a joband we were able to share that resource.

(05:34):
So you share the resources and thepeople, I'm sure that's that's got
to be a huge advanta. That'sthe biggest part, because there's you know,
there's different talent on each side thatare specialty. You know, some
guys just digging up the basements,some guys doing the lining of the pipes,
some guys doing the camera work,some guys doing the locating of the
pipes or the excavation. Excavation isa huge part of the business. And

(05:58):
pipes are deep in the street.A lot of Pittsburghers might not know,
but they're responsible for digging up thosesewers in the road. It's unfortunate,
but he gets expensive. So youwant top talent for safety and so from
efficiency and professionalism when you do thatwork, and being able to share the
tools and the people really benefited usboth, you know, coming out of
the gates all right, Mike's talkedabout the advantage. Jason, what kind

(06:23):
of advantage did you see? Iwould say that equivalent to what he said.
You know that there was a situationwhere a tool broke down and he
happened to have someone near he Therewas a situation where we had a certain
pipe that changed in size, andhe's more specialty in aligning that different size
of pipe and that transition of asewer. So he came in and helped

(06:46):
us with that. Really his serviceended the business focuses on as well,
on HVAC and service plumbing. WhereasI said, we focused on digging holes
and fixing pipes. We were wewere able to take his talent and his
people and bring them in to serviceour customers that we're asking for, those
for those needs and really round outthe service that we were the home service

(07:10):
brand hvac, fixing a faucet,fixing a garbage disposal. Immediately having his
service plumber's talent and being able togive him those calls or recommend them to
our customers. It was an immediateadvantage for us. Was the UM was
the merger logistically difficult? Was ithard to you know, come up with

(07:31):
you know, everybody on the samepage, because I'm sure you know one
company is used to doing things oneway, the other company's used to doing
something one way. How did youget on the same page. Yeah,
that's that's interesting. So there's alot of a lot of meetings take place,
a lot of a lot of UMmanagement ideas, and as we started
mapping them out like you would doon a typical board room, you figured

(07:55):
out we don't have a lot todo here because we're very, very very,
very energetic. The company's match.We both are very aligned and the
way we went to business. Wedo things like parties and celebrate employees birthdays.
You know, the companies are aligned. The way we go to business

(08:15):
was very similar. They were likeminded. The companies were pretty pretty and
honest. I mean we both provideas Google would state, where everybody leaves
their reviews fair, honest service,professional service. And you know, in
a business like plumbing, it generallytarnished by you know, contractor not showing
up doing what he says he's goingto do, sticking to his price,

(08:37):
doing the right job. And Ithink by and large, we both have
good reputations in the city of Pittsburgh. Look, it's a blue collar town,
so people it's a small city ina sense that people talk about,
you know, your reputation, andthat's important to Mike. That's important to
me. The rest of it isjust convincing the guys and getting the teams
together and kind of bringing everything togetherbecause I think when people here there's a

(08:58):
merger, they and this might havea little bit of a sting, but
you know, after that sting wearsoff, you kind of start working on
each division, whether it's the youknow, the excavation division. You start
working those together. And look,we're not perfect. I mean we have
a team of people behind us managersand that help us put that together.
And that really, you know,besides the morale of the company, the

(09:22):
culture of the company. Um,we both have likenesses on either side that
we benefit to share amongst each other. But you know, it's really getting
behind all the guys that do thework every day and and just making sure
that we can continue to recruit toptalent. All right, So you talked
about the culture, but now theculture is you're the big boys. You're

(09:43):
the big dogs in town, right, Um, what does that mean for
your employees? Is that a sourceof pride or is that something that they
go, Hey, you know what, we have to have a reputation.
We've got to maintain that reputation.Like we're the big dogs. You know,
we're Coca Cola. You know,We're we're the company people know and
respect. Do you do the peoplethat your employees do they realize that and

(10:07):
realize that that's that's something that theyhave to aspire to. Oh, that's
that's a great asset we have nowbecause the employees they love it, They
thrive off of it. They wantmore training, they want to do better
for the homeowner. The way theyapproach the homeowner, it's it's amazing to
see the sense of pride they have. You know, the trades usually get
a negative connotation of how how itcan be aggressive. You have to be

(10:33):
tough, you have to be youhave to be um bold in the way
that you speak, or you can'tget hurt. You can't get an injury.
It's just not that way anymore.You know. We train these guys
who speak professionally and be professional alwayson the customer service side of things when
we pick up the phone, allthe way to the end user. We're

(10:54):
really looking to own the home forHVACT plumbing and underground plumbing. What is
what is the biggest challenge for youas a company moving moving forward. Then
we have some things to put togetherin an accounting department, the different things
of their backbone of the business.But I think the biggest challenge for us
moving forward is working on continuing toconvince people or and or recruit people into

(11:22):
the trades. You know, there'syou can go to school and go to
college and become an attorney or becomea doctor. But man, you can
make a lot of money in plumbingand you don't have to be the owner
to do that. I mean youcan, you can really. Um,
It's it's something that that's always goingto be needed. You know, when
you look at COVID and what wewent through, what's what what's the top
performing business as a restaurant? No, top performing businesses? Where the food

(11:46):
where you can get your food,um, where you can get a roof,
under your under your over your head. And and to make sure that
you you know your utilities. Youneed water, you you need safe clean
drinking water. Um. You needto make sure that you're in a safe
environment. And the reality and everybodyknows this, plumbers protect the health of
the nation. Are you seeing atrend towards people more interested in the trades,

(12:07):
because you know, when when itcomes to college, you know,
the college loans is prohibitive exactly alot of people and when you graduate,
you probably won't make the money thatyou could be making as a plumber.
That's correct. And we and weboth pay to put people through the plumbing
the Impact Plumbing school here in Pittsburgh, we pay for that. As you're

(12:28):
an employee here. It's a fouryear program and you graduate after that four
years with a journeyman's plumber's license.Um, you know, if you're hungry,
the possibilities are endless with the trades, and even in HVAC that you
know, people need heat. Peoplebelieve it or not, strive to have
cool houses in the summer more thanyou would think with heat in the winter.

(12:50):
Might can attest to that. Ohyeah, So when it comes to
HVAC, that's that's probably the hardesttrade to find a technician in right now.
Hva see is something that they're lacking. They heard an article the other
day that for every ten people leavingthe trade right now, only six are
entering the space. Where do yourecruit people? Where where did they get

(13:13):
the training? Is there? Youknow, is there various Rosedale and things
like that. Sure, there's technicalschools that definitely train these technicians. However,
they're not enrolling at the rate thatpeople are retiring. Oh really,
I think the key is Mike's donea great job of building the morale or
the culture in this business where youget the guys to create a buzz out

(13:33):
there in the street. You know, Um, they talk about how they
like working there, and they getcompensated accordingly, and they it's to continue
to build a foundation for the forthe for the employees, the texts,
whether you're in the sewer and drain, where you're in the HVAC to work
at, and we want to getthem excited and like working there. Obviously
be paid accordingly, but really justchampion behind them and show them that hey,

(13:54):
this is a you know, Ilike to think that the trades are
recession proof business. There's not toomany things that can affect you from not
having water. I mean, ifwe look at the city of Pittsburgh in
Pennsylvania, American Water, they're alltaking lead out of the service lines in
the homes right now, and they'reproactively doing that with grants and different things.
It's happening in the city, it'shappening in the suburbs. There's a

(14:16):
lot of areas that still have lead. And these are things that that they'll
never go away. They won't goaway. I mean, this is a
huge necessity, and I think thatthat there's a it's a really great business
to be in. All right,So let me ask you, we only
have a couple of minutes left Sowhen it comes to philanthropic things, what
kind of charity ties do either oneof you guys are involved in. Anytime

(14:41):
there's a school or some kind ofbanner, some kind of promotion that we
can put at a school, orsome kind of public community center, fire
halls, we definitely donate to those. Um As far as something we've done
last year, it was it waspretty awesome. There was a family in
need for a first floor renova ofa bathroom and we help that that mother

(15:03):
out with her child and put ina at cost bathroom on our first floor.
Okay, We in the same liketo help the elderly community in that
regard. If someone's struggling and havinga hard time making ends meet, you
know, we can connect the dotsand try to give them what they need
at a free cost. But wedonate to local communities in Bethel Park and

(15:24):
Upper Saint Clair, in the SouthHills, basketball teams, golf outings where
that goes back into the community.So when it comes to the future,
where do you see you, guys, where do you see you the partnership
in five years, ten years,twenty years down the road. Oh,
it's endless. Like Jason just said, the opportunity in the trades. The

(15:46):
scale and what's going on in themarket right now is unbelievable. People have
figured out how to build a processwhere if you have if you have a
vision and a goal, you canget it. We have a electrical to
go to, we have more HVAC. We there's commercial, there's all kinds.
Could there be additional mergers possibly endless, could be more acquisitions of other

(16:11):
businesses. I mean, I thinkit's you know, it's it's exciting to
be a big powerhouse. And Idon't think that the region has a really
good, performing, hundred employee company, and I think it needs it.
And I think that the possibilities areendless as long as we keep providing that
killer service and the getting five starreviews from customers and being fair. Right,

(16:32):
you know, you can't when youget these services, you can't take
people for a ride. You know, you want to be fair with your
pricing, and if you consistently dothat, it just comes. And you
know, we're driven people. We'retwo driven people. We desire to do
better for the team that we've builtbehind us, not just ourselves. You
know, we're all along, we'realong for a ride. With a good,

(16:53):
good group of people and it's reallyyou know, the possibilities are endless.
Do you guys get along absolutely?Yeah, yeah, Yeah, we're
real similar, you know. That'sthat's what we did when we went to
the uh the boardroom, were talkingand everybody's looking at the managers looking at
going, oh man, these twoare really similar. And yeah, we
like the joke, like to havefun. Uh. You know, the

(17:15):
environment is not a high stress environment. It's fun. I mean, we
have a good time, you know, it's it's not um it's an interesting
dynamic because we kind of met,Like I said, it wasn't like we
just called each other seeking each otherout. But I think it happens naturally,
and we each have a good groupof team members in the office and

(17:37):
as well as in the field thatmake it all jive. And it'll will
constantly be working on it with theidea that we can grow and and have
more people that we can you know, feed their families and provide employment too
and just really bolster around the communityand if somebody needs your services. Mister
Seward dot com or McVeigh plumbing dotcom. Jason Docherty and Mike Aaron dosh

(18:00):
Y plumbing. Thank you so much, guys. This has been fun and
very interesting. Thank you guys,Thank you for having us. Thank you.
This has been the CEO you ShouldKnow podcast, showcasing businesses that are
driving our regional economy. Part ofiHeartMedia's commitment to the communities we serve.
I'm Johnny Hartwell, thank you somuch for listening.