#1 Plumbing Influencer: My Secret Behind 1.5M Followers and a $46M Exit! - Roger Wakefield - Local Marketing Secrets

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey there and welcome back to Local Marketing Secrets.
I'm your host Danny Webrand and today I'm with Roger Wakefield.
Roger is a master plumber turnedmedia powerhouse and he built a
plumbing empire. And then he built the world's
most popular plumbing YouTube channel with over 650,000
subscribers and millions of views.
He's a national voice for the trades, A keynote speaker and a

(00:22):
leading advocate for blue collarentrepreneurship.
So if you want to learn how to turn trust and expertise into a
brand, how tradespeople can dominate marketing, or just hear
one of the most inspiring stories in the industry, this
episode is for you. Now, without further ado,
Rodger, welcome to the show. Danny, thank you for having me.
Absolutely. So Rodger, tell me about how you

(00:43):
first got into the trades and plumbing.
I know it was over 45 years ago.Tell me like how how you
originally got into it? Well, I got in because I was
actually a junior in high school.
I was working with a friend of mine and it was a slow night and
we were managing a restaurant orI was managing the restaurant
and he worked with me and we were just sitting around talking

(01:03):
and he and he literally says he looked at me said, are you going
to do this forever? And I thought, dude, I am 16
years old. I am managing a restaurant.
Life is good. I was probably making 5 bucks an
hour or something. And he says, but if you quit or
if you get fired, who's going tohire you?
Who's going to hire a 16 year old restaurant manager?

(01:25):
And I've never really thought about that.
But I thought about it later that night because we kept
talking. He talked about his three
brothers and his father, that we're all plumbers and how much
they loved what they did. They got to build things, they
got to fix things. They had nice cars, nice trucks,
apartments or houses. Well, it was probably a couple
of weeks later that I either quit or probably got fired.

(01:47):
And I reached out to one of his brothers and said, look, can you
help get me a job in plumbing? Now, this was the last half of
my junior year. I'd quit high school.
I was, I was literally headed downhill.
But I got into plumbing and I loved it.
I loved the the camaraderie. I love the fact that we were a
group of people working for something together.

(02:08):
Now, I played football all through God, all through school.
So it was like having a team. You're doing something together.
So I did it the last half of my junior year, did it all that
summer. And luckily I had been dating a
little girl and she called me one day and she says, look, I
don't think that I could ever marry anybody that didn't

(02:30):
graduate high school. And of course, at the time you
think, oh, man, I'm in love, we're going to get married one
day. So I called one of the
principals. I said, look, is there any way I
can come back to school? He said, I will only let you
come back if you promise me you'll graduate.
So I said, OK, I did. It worked out pretty good.
But then after that, after I graduated, I started looking

(02:53):
around. I tried a couple of other
things, but I always got back into plumbing.
And that's really what got me started.
And I just, Abdullah, I loved itfrom the very beginning.
Interesting. Okay, yeah, I know something
that you're a big advocate for is not necessarily taking the
normal route, but most people are told to go to college and

(03:13):
get a four year degree and then get a nine to five.
Can you talk about what the opportunity is in trades and
what why that might actually be a great career path?
You know, and, and Danny, I lovethat because I think the people
that get in the trades right now, these are your next
entrepreneurs, these are your next millionaires because the
average age of tradespeople keeps getting higher and higher.

(03:35):
Right now, I believe the averageage for plumbers in Texas is
about 58 years old, 58. That means in the next 7 years,
half the people should retire and unfortunately for every 10
people that retire in the tradesright now, only about four
getting back in. So we're going to run into a big

(03:57):
supply and demand issue. I really think that in the next
and, and I'm going to say year maybe 2, I think trades people
are going to start getting closer and closer and closer to
that $100.00 an hour on the check.
A lot of people aren't going to be able to afford that.
Can you imagine? Because if you call a plumbing
company to hire someone to come fix your garbage disposal, for

(04:23):
that company to make money, he'sgot to pretty much 8X what he's
paying you. So that's $800.00 an hour for a
plumber. Plumbing companies are going to
be charging more for a plumber than doctors and lawyers are
charging. But I think that that's where
we're headed. And that's why I think this is
an amazing time for anybody who's either going to high

(04:44):
school, they're going to college, you're not sure what
they want to do, get into the trades.
It's it's a life changer. OK, so there's a big supply and
demand issue. Yeah, I heard this recently.
I you may have heard the stats that I think in a few years
there's going to be a shortage of like 500,000 electricians or
something like that. Well, maybe just electricians.

(05:05):
I was on Doctor Phil a year ago and literally when I was under a
year ago, he said. There's a million unfilled trace
jobs right now. In three years, they're
expecting that to be 4 to 5 million unfilled trade shops.
Wow, yeah. So there is a huge opportunity
here and you you can expect a pretty good salary.

(05:25):
Like I, I have some buddies thatare, are just getting into their
early careers and they they might be getting into design or
accounting. And I mean, they're making like
$25.00 an hour. So if you can make like 50 to
$100.00 an hour, I mean, and right out of high school.
So I guess what is like the natural career path?
Yeah. Now you're not going to make
that kind of money right out of high school.

(05:45):
But right now, out of high school, you can start anywhere
from 20, I must say, anywhere from 15 to $25.00 an hour,
depending on where you're at. And some places around the
country it's probably 15 to $30.00 an hour.
Imagine making $60,000 a year right out of high school in
Texas. We've got a program, the Texas
State Board of Plumbing Examiners, the TEA and TWC, the

(06:08):
Texas Education Agency, the Texas Workforce Commission, the
Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners all got together and
created this syllabus. So you go your freshman year of
high school and you decide, hey,I want to be a plumber and we've
got this program here. You take this course for three
years. If you graduate, you're eligible

(06:29):
to take your tradesman exam. What tradesman exam is a entry
level plumbing license that starts out at about $25.00 an
hour in Texas. So that's $52,000 a year the day
you walk out of high school. Not a bad way to start.
Yeah. No, that is a great way to
start. Yeah, no.
And on the flip side of that, I totally believe in home services

(06:51):
like we were talking about before the show.
I think there's such a big need for it with all this AI stuff
and with everything else. Like we are going to need
tradespeople. I think you probably saw this
maybe, maybe better than anyone,that a lot of people thought
that AI was going to be robots and they were going to replace
the trades first. But it's actually the trades
last, right? The trades will be the very last
they need. AI is great for anything done on

(07:13):
the computer. Now, I'm not saying that we
don't use computers, but AI is great for anything computer
driven, computer oriented. They're starting to do robotics
and stuff like that that can laybrick, that can put on roofs,
that can do all kinds of different things.
So it's going to, to reach more and more into the trades.

(07:35):
Truck drivers. You know what, guys, if you're
going to school right now to become a truck driver, quit
because we've already got autonomous vehicles.
They're making autonomous 18 Wheelers.
They're making autonomous jets. We're not going to need pilots
to fly the planes anymore. We can make AI do it and it
thinks faster and smarter and harder trades will be the hands

(07:57):
on skilled tradesperson will be one of the last things that's
ever touched by any of this. And why?
Just to be clear, why exactly isthat?
Just because the job is so complex and nuanced.
I think so. And I think because it's more
hands on so far the, the, the robots and AI and stuff can't,
you know, listen to the toilet and tell you what's wrong with

(08:19):
it. And, and maybe they can, but
then they've got to shut off thewater.
They got to take things apart. They got to test it.
Is the water leaking? Do they need to go up to the
street and turn off the meter? Do they turn it off at the valve
box? You know, there's a lot of
things that are just hands on and I don't think that it's
quite there yet. So it gets much more complex or
it's physical like you said, digital, it's much easier.

(08:39):
I mean, you can generate A blog,you can, you can edit a social
media post. But once it gets more complex,
when there are all these different things and it's also
physical, you need a like a physical robot to do that, then
it's much harder. And, and look at what you said.
I ask artificial intelligence. The intelligence can get into
the computer and reword everything and make it sound so

(09:00):
much better. There's no manual dexterity to
that. Now, the robots that they're,
they're putting the eye on, yeah, they're they're going to
be able to do a lot more things,but it's going to be very
expensive for a long, long time too.
So I do, I think it'll be a long, long time before it ever
gets into the trades where it actually starts taking away our

(09:20):
jobs. Awesome, cool.
So we, we've talked about a career in trades that that's
clearly a, a very good route to go.
But then you ended up starting your plumbing business about I
think it's about 10 years ago. Talk to me about what prompted
you to start your business and how it went.
Well, I was actually, I, I had joined the union in 1997 and I

(09:41):
had moved up by 2015. I was director of operations for
construction for one of the mechanical contractors here in
Dallas, and they had decided that they were going to get into
residential plumbing, which I thought was great.
I've always wanted to open my own residential company.
And it was going to be residential service where they

(10:03):
go out and repair people's problems.
So I was in the executive team meeting one day and this owner,
who is literally a former nurse that was taking the company over
from her parents, sat down in this meeting and she said, you
know, it was the rollout talk about what we were going to do,
how we're going to do it, what the brand was going to be.

(10:23):
And she started talking and she said, we're going to let
everybody know that we have the best trained plumbers and we
specialize in customer service. I'm like, Oh my God, I love
that. So.
So tell me, what are we going todo to train our plumbers?
And she kind of looked at me like I was stupid.
And she said, Roger, we'll make sure all our plumbers have

(10:44):
licenses. And I'm like, well, every
plumber in Texas has to have a license anyway.
And she says, well, I know we'lljust make sure ours too.
And I'm thinking, man, that is lame.
I said, OK, So what are you going to do to teach them
customer service? And again, she looks at me and
rolls her eyes. She says we'll make sure our
plumbers know how to say please,thank you, yes, ma'am and no

(11:05):
ma'am. And I'm like, wow.
And Danny, it was at that momentI realized I'm in the wrong seat
on the wrong bus, going the wrong direction at the wrong
time. I knew I was not in a good place
and got out of there shortly andended up opening my own business
probably within about a month. And what was that like first

(11:27):
starting your business? Was it kind of rocky or was it
was it smooth sound? Oh, it was scary as ever.
You know, I, I didn't plan on it.
So it was just literally I walked out of their office on a
Friday. I called my my Alex wife, called
her and said, do me a favor, grab the Jeep, come get me.
She said, what do you mean? I said just come pick me up at

(11:49):
work. I said, and bring the Jeep
because I've got some stuff I need to put in the back of it.
She said, this doesn't sound good.
I said no, it sounds great. Now.
I went home that Friday thinking, you know, I've worked
for some of the best mechanical contractors here.
I can go back to work at any of them.
I can walk in as a Superintendent.
I can walk in as possibly director of operations.
I've grown and done really good things here.

(12:12):
And what I did is I got home anddecided I'm going to relax this
weekend. Monday morning, I got a call
from someone. Now I had thought about opening
my own company. So I had my insurance in place,
I had my license, I had everything done.
So I call or I got a call early Monday morning, I decided I was
going to sleep in, which I normally don't do, but I got a

(12:34):
phone call and it's one of my customers that I've worked for
before. She said our house got hit by
lightning. We have the fire department came
out and shut off the gas. Lightning strike went in the
house. We've got a gas leak up there.
We know you're busy, but could you either refer somebody or see
if you can come fix it later? And I just said, hey, I can come

(12:56):
fix it right now. So that's kind of how my company
started. And what I did is because I
didn't know a lot about SEOI didn't know a lot about
marketing. I tried the word of mouth thing.
I started going to real estate offices and walking in and say,
hey, I'm Roger Wakefield, I'm a plumber.
I do this, I do this, I do this,and it was just getting in front

(13:17):
of people. And eventually one day I
realized like I can't get in front of people fast enough.
And I love that. Local marketing services is just
about that. It's about local.
You don't have to be the biggestplumber in the world.
You got to be the biggest one inyour area.
And what I was doing was gettingout doing the word of mouth
thing. I would agree to come in and

(13:38):
teach them a class about houses and how they have leaks under
them and you don't just need an inspection.
Maybe you need a sewer water test.
And we started growing a business based on that and they
call it the a hydrostatic test, which if you look up hydrostatic
test, it says you apply externalpressure.
A lot of the real estate officessay they will not let you

(14:00):
perform that test on their house.
So if I represent a buyer, I'll say, well, then tell them you're
not going to buy their house because they won't let you test
it. And their attorneys called me
one day and I'm not going to name the real estate office, but
their attorneys called me and said, why are you telling people
not to buy our houses? I said, because you won't let us
test the sewer and the water lines underneath the slab.

(14:21):
And they said, well, you'll damage it.
I said it's impossible for me todamage it.
And they said, well, if you apply pressure, I said, well,
that's that's a stupid way to doa test.
I would never do that. But when they looked up
hydrostatic, that's exactly whatit is.
I said, guys, we call it a sewerwater test.
All I'm trying to do is put a test ball in the sewer line,
wreck comes out of the house, fill it with water and see if it

(14:43):
holds. I said it's the exact same test
that was done on the plumbing system when the house was built.
I said then I want to put a gauge on it.
I want to turn the meter off andsee if the pressure drops.
I'm never applying any external pressure.
And they said, Rodger, from now on when you get that contract,
mark that line out. I said, so you'll allow me to do

(15:04):
this test. They said, absolutely, if you're
not applying under pressure, mark that line out.
I said, OK, so you know, if you if you're a smart plumber, you
can argue with attorneys and just I and it's not argue with
them, it's educated. They were ignorant as to what we
were actually doing. But we grew a business doing
this and we literally would go into real estate offices, teach

(15:26):
the real estate agents about this and say, how many of y'all
are recommending this to your buyers?
It's like, why not? If a home inspector comes to
this is that ceiling fan needs to be changed, great, that's 250
bucks. If your plumbing needs to be
replaced, that's 125,000. Which one are you really worried
about here? And we built a great reputation

(15:46):
doing that. Yeah, no, I've, I've seen you do
that over and over and that tiesdirectly into the YouTube
channel that you have published so many videos, there's so much
training, there's so much everything you of courses you
have all of this. It seems like that's kind of
your almost at least one of yourcore philosophies is education.
So educating your buyers or educating partners as well.

(16:08):
So where do other companies fallshort of this or like and where
can they get started educating? I I think that they think they
can't do it. And it's really neat because now
I travel to conferences. I go to conferences all the
time. I went to Wet in Indianapolis at
the beginning of the year and I'm walking down the corridor
and this guy walks up to me and says, Oh my God, Rodger, I love

(16:30):
watching you. He says I do what you say.
He said I actually made a video about a month ago about what we
were doing. He said we were doing this
little job at a house till we went out and just shot a video
about it. He says, and I put it on my
Facebook and my wife shared it. He said Sunday morning when my
wife went to church, one of her friends came up and says, Oh, my

(16:51):
God, your husband's a plumber. She says, yeah, how did you
know? He said, I saw that video that
you that you posted, said I needto hire him.
He says, Rodger, we got a job just from making a video.
I know I said it it it works. I've done it for years now.
And he said it was so easy to do.

(17:12):
I said, I know. He said we almost didn't do it.
I said, so why did you said? Because I kept watching you and
you kept saying, look, this willwork.
Just make the video. Is this what we did?
Pretty. Cool.
So so So what does that look like?
Should that should that just be like a quick 32nd video or
should it be like a in depth YouTube video?

(17:33):
It, it depends on where they're going to put it.
If you know you, you know me, you know what I'll do.
I'll make long form content for YouTube now.
And I started doing that in the beginning, but then we realized,
man, I can go into any one of these videos and cut out a clip
and share it to any other socialmedia platform.
So we've grown, we've done different things, but I always
recommend people start with YouTube because then it gives

(17:55):
you time to build a relationshipwith a customer.
If I were starting out again right now, I would make probably
the 1st 20 videos would be me going to my CSR and saying, what
questions do people call and askyou everyday?
Make that video. Now when they call and say, hey,
Danny, look, I'm, I'm sorry, yougot a great question about how

(18:19):
we exchange water heaters. We've got a video for that.
If you'll give me your e-mail address and your cell phone
number, I can either e-mail you the link or text it to you.
Now you can watch that video. Now you know what?
You get me explaining to you whywe do what we do and how we do
it. Now we're building a
relationship. You're watching me, you're

(18:39):
listening to me, you're hearing me speak, you're hearing me look
you in the eyes. They look.
This is what we do for you when we come out to your house.
I've already introduced myself to you and you're like, man,
that's my guy right there. Yeah, no, it's crazy and it's
really a cheat code to trust building.
I found that this is just like the core element of conducting

(19:02):
business, especially when it's more high ticket.
That could be a big plumbing jobor for me, like a big, you know,
agency deal or something like that.
It is so easy. Like some people actually say,
hey, I've been watching your podcast for over a year now.
I'm finally ready to become a client.
Or, hey, you know, we were talking like four months ago on
LinkedIn. I keep seeing your stuff.
OK. Like, dude, let's get on the

(19:23):
call. I'm.
I'm ready to move forward with this.
So some people, yeah. Go ahead.
I'm just going to say some people have a longer buying
cycle and they're slower to trust.
So some people, they might see one video and they're ready to
to become a customer right away and they might have to watch
your whole YouTube channel before they come become a
customer. And and I like that you said
that about watching one video when I left the office one day

(19:47):
my my CSR said, say, hey, Roger,look the job you're going out to
the customers there. He wanted to talk to you, wanted
to meet you. So, OK, so we go out and go, my
God, stop up front, let him knowthat we're there.
And I go right around back and Iget down.
I want to see what we're doing and how it looks.
And I'm under the house and I come crawling back up and the
customer standing there. So I got out and Danny, he says,

(20:09):
Roger, do do you mind if I tell you why I hired your company?
I said no, no, I'd love to hear that.
He said you made a video. You made a video about not being
the cheapest plumber. He says that I found it because
I was looking for the cheapest plumber and I wanted the

(20:29):
cheapest plumber. And then I watched your video
and you talk about you've got the best trained plumbers, you
use the best equipment, you bring in engineers to make sure
that the right amount of soil gets put back.
You go above and beyond to do things right, he says.

(20:50):
Rodger I watched that video fivetimes because I knew I wanted
the cheapest plumber. But by the time I watched your
video that many times, I wanted you.
I wanted someone that was going to do it right.
So sometimes the video you expect to make that would
probably probably drive people away, brings people in for even

(21:11):
a better reason. You build that trust.
You build that relationship. Yeah, and also that that comes
from a place of being honest. I mean, if you, if you're, if
you're the cheapest, say that. If if you're the premium option,
then say that as well. Now absolutely we when what
we've been talking about here really applies to any company.
I mean, anyone can make some short form videos, some YouTube
videos, but what you've done like I it's it's just
unimaginable. I, I just want to like praise

(21:33):
you here for a second. I, I mean, I think you're, you
might, might be the most followed person in the traits.
You have over 600,000 followers on YouTube, 600,000 on TikTok.
I say you just hit 100K on Instagram.
How like first, let's get back to the beginning of this.
It's like, did you decide to become an influencer?
Like now that. Let's get started.

(21:54):
Number one and Danny, I didn't even realize I I'd make money at
this. That thought never crossed my
mind. I walked into a social media
marketing conference because I was getting ripped off by
marketing companies. Literally.
I've spent $47,000 on marketing that did not work.
And I tell people, imagine driving down the road taking a

(22:18):
bag with $47,000 cash in it, just shaking it out the window
and knowing that when you get toyour office, your phone is not
going to ring. That's where I was.
So I decided, and I had talked to some of these marketing
companies about social media, and they're telling me things
like, hey, tomorrow's National Pizza Day, make a post about

(22:39):
that. And I'm like, what's National
Pizza Day got to do with plumbing?
But other than after you eat thepizza, guess where it's going to
come out? But he said that, and I'm like,
you know, that's not what I wantto do.
So I went to the social media marketing conference at the age
of 54 thinking of course that I'm going to learn more about

(23:03):
Facebook because at 54, that's what social media is.
And I go to this conference and I'm walking down the corridor,
second day there, first day I'd learned about speaking on stages
and getting better and getting in front of your customers.
And I'm walking down this corridor headed to a Facebook
room and I see a placard that said get in front of your
customers using video. And I thought, wow, we can do

(23:26):
that. We've made videos before we
could do that. So I walk in, I sat down on the
front row and the guy walks out on stage and I'm literally
sitting in on the front row right in front of him.
And one of the first things he says is YouTube is the second
largest search engine in the world.
And Danny, I shot my notebook. I thought this guy's stupid.

(23:47):
He has no idea what he's talkingabout.
YouTube's just where I store my videos.
And I put my hand on the chair next to me and I'm raising up
and turning around getting readyto walk out and I noticed the
back of the room is full. So real quick I thought, wow,
maybe he knows something. I look back up at him in time to
hear him say. And it's owned by Google, the
largest search engine in the world.

(24:10):
And I'm thinking, you know, we send a ton of money to Google.
That's not working very well. Why aren't we sending any money
to YouTube? In the next 45 minutes, I took
like 3 pages of notes on I and Ihad to leave early that Friday.
The conference was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
I had to leave early that Fridaybecause I had a radio show in

(24:31):
Dallas Saturday morning. So I didn't even get to hang
around for the last keynote speaker that I really wanted to
hear. But I'm on the plane, there's
nobody next to me, so I've got both tray tables down, I've got
my laptop, my iPad, my notebook,and all these little notebooks
and I'm going through everythingtrying to come up with a plan.
How do we implement this? How do we take it?

(24:52):
And I had to figure out, do I doI want to practice speaking and
get better speaking or do I wantto do YouTube?
After the radio show the next day, I went back to my office
work till about 6:00 that night.Sunday morning my my ex-wife and
I got up, went to church, I tookher home, went back to the
office. And then Monday morning when the
plumbers came in, we had a few things going on.

(25:12):
So after we cleared the office out, I called everybody else
together and said we're changingthe way we do our marketing and
we're going to change it right now.
We're going to start doing YouTube.
And they thought I was crazy. They, they, they probably still
think I'm crazy, but it's worked.
And we literally started out getting on YouTube to learn how

(25:32):
to do YouTube. And by the end of the year, we
had 300 subscribers. We thought we were just crushing
it. Yeah.
And I think by the end of the next year, we had 10,000
subscribers and it just started to grow.
And once it started growing, we could afford to hire more
people. And then we started learning

(25:52):
about taking this long form content, cutting it, clipping it
and repurposing it. And it's worked out pretty good.
Wow, that is such a powerful story.
And it all started from you justgoing to a conference happening
to walk into the right room. You're going to leave then.
OK, you saw the room is full. OK, I'll probably stay in here.
That is so wild. It's so crazy how things happen

(26:13):
like that. So you talked about like the the
initial starting point, but whatis that bridge of like becoming
like a, a very famous influencer, like everyone knows
you now how like how did you do that?
I, I think that it's, it's, you know, it's a lot of little
things that you do. I, I'm probably the only plumber
in the world that's got a 43 page brand book and it talks

(26:37):
about the colors we wear the, the top colors I wear.
It talks about everything. It talks the fact that I believe
in drinking bourbon. We, we've got a group called the
Texas Whiskey Society. It talks about the different
products we're involved with, but it also talks about what we
won't do, what we don't do. I turn down the $25,000 speaking

(26:58):
gig because they're like what? You have to wear a suit.
It's like, OK, I don't wear suits.
And they said, well, they're going to be CE OS and presidents
of companies in here and stuff like this.
And that's great. Once I put that suit on online
to them and I'm just best not meand they literally they said
you're going to turn down a $25,000 speaking gig.

(27:18):
I said no, y'all are going to lose valuable information
because you won't want me to wear a suit.
And we we talk about what we believe in and what we don't
believe in. I don't believe every kid should
go to college. I think getting in the trades is
a better opportunity right now as we discussed while ago.
OK, so you have to stay true to yourself, but what is what is

(27:40):
the actual strategy behind it? We can start with YouTube, then
move on to other platforms because you're crushing on every
platform. But what about YouTube?
Is it like 3 videos a week? And what are you making the
videos about? What we started out at 3 videos
a week. We, we do continuous research.
I mean, every day I've, I've got, I'm, I'm, I'm actually down
right now. I've got 1234 people over here

(28:04):
that do research, that help me put stuff together that ID 8,
and I'm still studying YouTube. I'm helping build an AI product
right now that will do channel audits for people that go so in
depth. It's amazing.
So I'm continuously, because being a student of YouTube, that

(28:27):
same conference I've been back to every single year, I go to
multiple conferences now. I still sit on the front row, I
still take notes. And Danny, it's funny because
people will come up to and say, Oh my gosh, you're Roger
Wakefield. You, you could have taught this.
I said, I know I've taught this before and they're like, but why
are you on the front row taking notes?
It's like, because if I can learn one thing that's going to

(28:48):
help me get better, I want to learn it and implement it.
And I still do that. I mean, I actually went back and
spoke at that very first conference earlier this year and
they let me speak to the first timers and tell them here's what
I did. And everybody, including the,
the, the owner of the conference, the founder, they

(29:10):
always come up to me and say, Rodger, what is the one thing
They said? There were 6000 people at that
conference when you walked in. You have walked out and done
more with less than anybody. What is the one thing you do?
And I'll tell them it's implementation.
I literally, I walked in from that conference that Monday and

(29:33):
I've already done the research. I decided we're going to do 3
videos a week, every week. We're going to know our
keywords, We're going to know what our channel's about, and
that's what we're going to focuson.
And I knew all this just from taking notes from a conference
and getting on the computer and doing research on YouTube.
On YouTube. Yeah.

(29:53):
And it was so crazy. It worked.
And then talk to me about and we've already kind of entered at
this, but like what would have been some of the opportunities
and like what what is what is stemmed from building a personal
brand specifically on YouTube? Well, man, it's, it's been
really good. Within about a year, I was asked
to speak at Vidcon, which is thelargest social media marketing

(30:16):
conference. LinkedIn reached out to me and
asked me if I'd speak. And I'm like, I don't know.
I got to call my coach. I didn't even know what Vidcon
was. I had no idea.
And I called him. I said, hey, I got asked to
speak at Vidcon. He said say yes.
I said, what is it? He said don't worry about it,
say yes. So I reached out and said yes.
And I ended up speaking for LinkedIn at Vidcon.

(30:40):
I've I've been on Doctor Phil. I was asked to come in and be on
Doctor Phil because he had an attorney and a couple of tick
tockers that are talking about, look, everybody needs to go to
college. Don't get into the trades and
I'm like, y'all are nuts, y'all are crazy.
So I got to do that. I've got to be on the Today
show. I got to go to New York to be on

(31:02):
Chris Cuomo with micro. I have just, I've had the most
amazing opportunities to get to get out and talk about the
trades, to get out and talk about social media.
And then I love what I get to do.
And then you've met me. You've been here to my studios.
I'd drive down the road some days and just start giggling.

(31:22):
I'm like, I cannot believe this is happening to me.
I am giving the most amazing life I could ever imagine.
Yeah, no, it's so incredible. It all comes from social media.
It's such a huge opportunity. And again, like we were talking
about, you don't have to be famous, you don't have to be an
influencer. There's there's still an
opportunity regardless. That's something something kind
of funny. I did want to mention you were
actually just talking about, yeah, that that we were in

(31:45):
person together in Dallas. One of the things I thought was
kind of funny that I'd like to talk about a little bit here is
you said, I'm kind of paraphrasing here that TikTok is
almost worthless, that you have six 600,000 followers there and
you don't even care that the platform could be removed
tomorrow and you don't even careabout.
Why is that? I don't make money on it, and

(32:06):
it's not that life is all about making money.
I don't think that's the majority of my audience is a
plumber, but I think that it should be and that's why I stay
there because a lot of young people need to hear about the
trades. They need to hear about that
option. Some of them are going to go to
work at McDonald's and Taco Belland stuff like that.
Nothing wrong with that, but thetrades is a profession.

(32:28):
If you get into the plumbing, electrical and HVAC, most states
require a professional license. You can make a great living.
When I go to trade shows, I've had grown men come up to me
almost crying and saying you've changed my life.
You got me out of Taco Bell and now I'm driving a plumbing truck
and I'm making more money than I've ever made.

(32:50):
I got to take my family on vacation for the first time
ever. And when you hear stories like
that, it's just it lets you know, look, what I'm doing is
working and this is worthwhile. Absolutely.
Things like that are just awesome.
Yeah, no, that is so cool for someone that is starting a
plumbing company or a home service company.

(33:11):
I mean, should they start in social media right away or that
should they start doing some other things like word of mouth
and such first? You know, word of mouth is great
in the beginning. You have all the time in the
world. You don't have any money.
And that's why I think social media is great because it puts
you out there. If you're going out networking,
you're talking 1:00 to 1:00, I think.

(33:33):
I don't know if I've got the information here with me in in
the last well, here I got it right in the last 24 hours and I
do this on stage so I can alwaysfind it pretty quick.
But you know, when you're out talking one to one or even if
you're out, say you're out at you're educating real estate
agents, which is there's nothingall wrong with it.

(33:55):
It's great. You're talking 1 to 51, one to
100. However many people in the room
in the last 48 hours, I've talked to 106,000 people, a
106,000 and and that's just on YouTube views wise, that's not
my biggest. I get a lot of views on TikTok.

(34:17):
I get a lot of views on Facebookand Instagram.
So say that, say that it quadruples, say it's 500,000
across all the platforms. That's 500,000 people I've
talked to in the last two days, times 15, because there's about
30 days on the month. We generate about 10 million

(34:41):
views a month across all our social platforms.
You're talking 1:00 to 1:00 if you're walking in a room, if
you're networking, maybe one to five.
Maybe you got a group around you.
I'm talking one to many every single day.
And a lot of people say, well, Rodger, I don't want to be you.
I don't want to be nationwide. I don't want to be global.

(35:03):
I don't want people in the Netherlands to be able to search
plumbing and find me. Yeah, in a way you do, because
they go to your website, they gocheck you out, and Danny, you're
the marketing guy. What happens if 10,000 people a
day in the United States go to my website?
It's shows as a trust signal to Google.

(35:25):
I mean, Google likes all the activity on your site.
Everyone's searching your brand all the time.
It's like, OK, Dang, OK, Roger is clearly a big deal if
everyone's searching them all the time.
Your domain authority goes up that helps you get found against
your competition. I remember one time one of my
website guys sent me a screenshot.
He searched Dallas, TX plumbing at the time I was doing

(35:47):
$1,000,000 a year and the two companies I was right above were
doing 80 and 100 million a year.It works.
This builds your domain authority.
Google's looking for EEAT. Yeah, experience,
authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
Yeah, no, exactly. So regarding like the well,

(36:10):
actually that there's a, there'sa few places I want to take
this. So how about the other social
platforms? So should we also be using
Facebook and you know, we mentioned TikTok, Instagram,
like should we just repurpose across those or what's your
strategy there? You, you can repurpose, you
don't have to. Repurposing is great because if
you've got good editors, when they're going through an

(36:31):
editing, if it's like, hey, I said something funny, I said
something really sharp, I said something that was a great sound
bite, cut it, clip it, let's post it.
There's also companies out therethat do that for you.
So there's a lot of different opportunities to do it.
But yeah, I think that once you establish yourself on one good
platform and don't try to start out doing YouTube, Facebook,

(36:53):
Instagram X LinkedIn, don't try to start out on every platform
strong. We started out on YouTube 3
videos a week and that was a lot.
And one of my first YouTube coaches whenever he came into my
studio to visit, he looked around, he looked at the
company, he looked at what we'redoing plumbing and he did.
He called me and my ex-wife and and Will who's her son who is

(37:17):
helping me do YouTube and everything called us all again.
He said look my recommendation is y'all cut down to 1 video a
week. He said y'all got a lot going
on. I said man I love that but if
you ever tell me that again you're fired.
I said I'm doing 3 videos a week, we're going to grow this
thing. He said OK.
He said that's up to y'all he said but it's a lot of work.
I said I understand that and I'mwilling to do it.

(37:38):
And you did do it. Then we started branching into
other platforms. Yeah, Yeah, 30%.
Something I was meaning to ask is the difference and what
people should pursue versus a really a personal brand versus a
company brand. So you have massively built more
personal brand, but I feel like some people are struggling with
this. They they're not sure of whether

(37:59):
to just post for their company or maybe they're they're kind of
weird about posting on their maybe their first personal
Facebook and like, oh, my friends and family are going to
see it's kind of weird. So should you go for personal or
company brand? Yeah, I think eventually you do
both. Now, we started our channel.
It was called Texas Green Plumbing.
And after a couple of years we started realizing, wow, you

(38:20):
know, we got a lot of plumbers coming in here and they're
starting to recognize me. So we started building the
Rodger Wakefield brand and what we did is we got a logo.
We, we started working with it. We started looking at our
colors. We just started doing a lot of
different things. I think you can do both.
I think that in the beginning itneeds to be about your company

(38:42):
because that's what you're trying to grow.
Once you get that company growing, if you're growing too,
remember I grew my company, but I also grew, we sold our
plumbing business. We are completely out of
plumbing now because we grew so big in social media.
We had to figure out where do wego?
Which way do we focus? Do we focus on the plumbing

(39:03):
company? Because if so, I got to quit
doing so much social and get back into it.
Or do I start getting out of theplumbing company and start
focusing more on the social media And that's the direction
that we went. Why did you get out of the out
of the plumbing company? It we got so big on social
media, I was needing to travel, needing to speak.
We saw the opportunity to build courses, we started getting

(39:25):
sponsorships, and we realized I'm making more money on social
media than I am in the plumbing company.
And it was just smarter for me to say, look, I'm going to focus
on social. We kept running the plumbing
company, but we started letting people know it was for sale.
And then basically we sold it three times.
So it worked. Yeah, I remember you talking

(39:46):
about that process, that you hadseveral exits.
Talk to me about that. What?
Were there any mistakes there? I'd I know there's a lot of
nightmare stories regarding. No mistakes at all.
My first real coach was Michael Gerber.
He wrote the E Myth books. Yeah.
And when I I learned so much from him.
Smart, smart guy. Through the E Myth, I learned

(40:08):
when you sell a company that youknow you're selling to someone,
that's going to grow it. Try to retain part ownership.
So that's what we did. We actually retained a
percentage. So we bought the company, but
now we owned a small percentage of the bigger combined company.
When we sold to them, they were a $9 million a year company.

(40:28):
I was $1,000,000 a year. So we we look good on paper.
Two years later they sold to AVCGroup.
So when I sold the first time, Isold for $1,000,000.
When we sold to the VC group sold for 45,000,000.
And then the plan is two or three years from now to sell for

(40:50):
100 million. And since they retained part
ownership when they sold, I still had part ownership.
But what I decided to do is go ahead and let my shares go last
December. That way I could focus on what
I'm doing here. Wow, that is incredible.
I mean, So what advice would youhave to home service owners that
are selling their business maybemaybe they're making a pivot

(41:11):
like you to social media or something else.
How do they go about exiting their company?
Well, I think first of all, you've got to build your company
to exit. I teach people that in the
beginning when when you get intothe trades, know your game plan,
know your exit plan. Don't just get in and say, look,
I'm going to be a plumber. If you're aiming just to be a
plumber, you're aiming really, really low.

(41:32):
Say, look, I want to be a plumber, then I want to be a
foreman, then I want to be a Superintendent, then I'm going
to be director of operations in one day.
I want to either run a big company or I want to own a big
company. If I own a big company, I want
to sell it. So I want to do things right
from the very beginning. Get your accountant, get your
attorney, get things set up where you look amazing on paper
because that's what they want tosee in social media.

(41:56):
Start collecting emails, Lead capture.
That way you build your e-mail list, your e-mail list, whether
it's your customers for your company or the people that
follow you on social media, thisis what people really want.
They want that information, theywant that data, and that's the
magic. Did you ever experience any
problems? Because I I think some people at

(42:18):
least are a little bit more hesitant to build their personal
brand because of this. That does it hurt exiting your
company when your face is attached to the brand like yours
was. It didn't hurt me because we had
separated it out. There was the Texas grain
plumbing, but there was the Roger Wakefield and they
actually kept me on not just hisHonor.

(42:39):
But look, keep doing what you'redoing on video because that
makes the phone ring. It still makes the phone ring.
I get, OK, cool. I get calls from them all the
time saying, hey, you know that like 3 people a week call here
and want to talk to Roger Wakefield.
And those were off old videos. So it's like, I know it still
works. It's going to work forever.

(43:00):
Social media is worth the investment.
And maybe as we wrap up here, I'd like you to break down one
of your most viral videos, like overall, how do you make a viral
video? How do you get a lot of views?
It's it's easy. One of our most watched videos.
I remember the day we shot it. My stepson shot it, he edit it,

(43:23):
he posted it and then and we literally shot it that morning.
I had on my orange shirt. I had all my green gloves and
it's called How to fix a runningtoilet.
Guaranteed he walked in my office after his post, he said.
He said, look, I got to tell you, he said this video sucked.
I said, OK, how come He said, look, it wasn't fun, it wasn't
exciting. There was nothing crazy in it.

(43:47):
He said you just literally shot a video step by step how to fix
the toilet. He said it was boring.
He said it's he said this sucked.
I said, OK, do we have anything else in the vault that we could
put up? He says no, no, no, it's already
up. He says we don't have anything
else. I didn't have anything else to
put up, he said. But I just want to let you know,

(44:08):
I said we'll never shoot anothervideo like that.
OK, let's get ahead. That way.
If I ever do shoot something that you don't think turns out
good, we we can we can trash it within a few years.
That was my number one video. That videos now has got like 5
and a half million views. YouTube itself has paid me over

(44:30):
$50,000 just from people watching that video.
So most people need to make Evergreen content in your area.
What are people searching every day?
You then if if you're big on SEOSEO for local businesses, SEO

(44:52):
for local plumbing companies, SEO for local landscape
companies and you take you make a video about what SEO is
special about that how you do it.
And pretty soon people are searching you and you're the guy
that's found for SEO for local this.
They're like, dude, you're you're the guy I need to call.
And I know I'm using you as an example, and I know you already

(45:13):
know it, but it's an easy example because everybody
understands what you do. You know, it applies to any
business and it's it does. But like like you've mentioned,
it's different than a website page or anything else when it's
a mid to long form video. Like people can actually sit
down and connect with you like ashort form video.
I feel like you can't really establish a connection there.
It's like, you know, I saw you for 30 seconds, but I need more.

(45:34):
So I feel like maybe that's almost like a sample of a long
form video, but I think you still do need the long form
videos in place. And, and I think you use them
different places, but I got me wrong.
We'll take these same shorts that we share other places and
put them on our shorts too. But I like the way you said it
because you're building relationships with people.
The big thing about YouTube, people are searching me.

(45:56):
It's not a video, it's not an ad.
It's not an ad on TV. Some of my sponsors say, well,
you know, we spent almost that much money making a commercial
and doing this. It's like, OK, and you got maybe
.01% of the viewers that are even interested in that.
How did it work out for you? Because I'm getting 106,000
views every two days and these are people searching for this.

(46:23):
They're watching the video, they're engaging with it,
they're commenting on it. Did you get that from your
television commercial? Did you get any phone calls the
next day? What happened?
We engage with people. You don't just post and ghost.
You don't just post and leave it.
We comment. Even when we share it on other

(46:43):
platforms, we go in. When people comment, we go in
and reply. Gee, Danny, I'm glad you loved
that video. What was your favorite part?
Now you're going to come back tosee what I replied.
Now you're going to come in again to tell me what your
favorite part was. Guess what?
Now I'm going to come back again.
Danny, I'm glad that you love that part.
Did you see where we did something somewhere in this
video? Or if I were to make another

(47:05):
video, what would you recommend?Now you're going to come back
and see what I come in again. Now you're going to leave a
comment again. Every time you come in, that's
another view. And YouTube says, man, this must
be a great video. Danny came in and watched this
thing five times. Yeah, so bad, Roger, you are
just, you are an industry Titan.You, you are so good at what you

(47:26):
do. Even just speaking to you here.
I can, I can tell the passion inyour voice that you are such a
great speaker. I mean really, I can.
I can just it, it is so great tohave you on the show.
And as we wrap up here, the lastquestion I've got for you is
what is your overall message to the trades industry, to people
that are maybe interested in getting into marketing or social
media, Just like what, what is your message for the people?

(47:48):
What do you want to leave them off with?
Yeah, I, I think that people that want to get into it, you,
you need to think about it. I, I, I made a free webinar.
It's called Just Matt Rodger. So anybody who hears me here can
go listen this free webinar and literally it tells them that
YouTube's not really the problemis that voice inside your head.
It makes you think YouTube won'twork for you.

(48:10):
My coach is also Mr. Beast coachand Mr. Beast literally has said
if you have a business, you needto have a YouTube channel.
And luckily I learned that sevenyears ago sitting in a room and
realized, wait, YouTube is the second largest search engine in
the world. I want them searching for me.
And we were able to do that. So you don't need all that.

(48:33):
You don't need a lot of fancy equipment.
You don't have to start with a lot of views.
You don't have to start with a lot of subscribers, but you've
got to get started. And literally we started with
our phones. We started with iPads.
When I first was going live, it was on a laptop that I'm backing
up far away from. You don't have to be the biggest
plumber on YouTube. You can become the biggest

(48:56):
plumber in your area and that will help your business more
than anything. How to fix a running toilet in
Dallas TX How to do a slab leak in Dallas TX.
Put your city name in there and it will help you get found
locally, won't it Danny? Absolutely.
No, it does. I've seen this work time and

(49:17):
time again, Yeah. Oh, you're, you're an SEO.
You get it, You understand it. Yeah, definitely.
And a lot of people think it's just just Google.
And obviously there's large language models like chat, BT
there's YouTube, there's social media platforms as well.
Like you mentioned, YouTube is the second largest, largest
search engine. So a lot of people aren't even
aware of that. And yeah, just so many good

(49:38):
Nuggets in this show. So great having you on, Roger.
Now, usually at this point I askpeople to plug what social
platforms they're on. But since you're so big, I'll
just do it for you who are on YouTube.
You are on TikTok, you're on Instagram, LinkedIn, really all
the social platforms. Yes, all of those will be
LinkedIn, the description. So you can check those out
below. Just Roger Wakefield everywhere.
And then anything else you'd like to plug promote, Roger.

(50:01):
Yeah, that, the webinar is what starts people off.
It's free. I do have a, a YouTube course,
Kickstarter, YouTube. I think it's great.
I've spent, I've spent over, God, I hate to think about the
number. I've spent hundreds of thousands
of dollars learning social mediaand when I put this course
together people are literally like Rodger.

(50:24):
You could just become a YouTube coach.
It's like I don't want to. I still do YouTube.
That's why I keep studying it. That's why I keep learning it.
That's why I keep crawling and Itake.
I've taken almost everything I know and put into this course.
It was originally going to be an8 week course or eight session
course. We went in and made a 9th 1.
How to make money because my first sponsorship was $400,000 a

(50:45):
year. I had 10,000 subscribers when we
started talking, 40,000 when we signed the contract, and then
got a $400,000 a year sponsorship package.
So we decided, hey, you know what, The one thing people
always ask you about all the other influencers like how do
you make so much money? So we decided to put that in
there too, to help them learn how to make money.

(51:08):
Awesome, how can people find that course?
No, I don't know. I think you've got a link to it
or something. Kicks.
Yeah. OK, Kickstart your YouTube.
If they go through the webinar, just Matt rodger.com, there's a
link in there. They'll take them to it.
OK, perfect. OK, so make sure to check out
that webinar. Make sure to follow Rodger
everywhere. Rodger, this has been such a
great show. I've learned a ton from you and
it's so great to have you on. Danny, thank you so much.

(51:30):
I do appreciate it and I love what you're doing for the local
businesses. I got into YouTube because I got
tired of getting ripped off by marketing companies.
It's nice to know there are people out there trying to do it
right. Thank you so much, Roger.
Roger, that really means a lot. Thank you.
Thanks.

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#1 Plumbing Influencer: My Secret Behind 1.5M Followers and a $46M Exit! - Roger Wakefield

Episode Transcript

Host

Danny Leibrandt

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#1 Plumbing Influencer: My Secret Behind 1.5M Followers and a $46M Exit! - Roger Wakefield