Gold Medaglia

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Since 1961, Court's plumbing has offered friendly, reliable service to residences all over Bergen County, New Jersey.

(00:09):
We are a fourth generation family-owned business, unnotched in customer satisfaction and professionalism while working in your home.
We are the hydronic heating and water filtration specialists, with a workmanship guarantee to put you at ease so you can rest comfortably.
We offer financing for those big projects that catch you off guard, and we have a network of excellent contractors in all fields for any project you wish to tackle.

(00:37):
Call our responsive office team and we'll dispatch a handsome and educated technician to lay the smackdown on all your plumbing issues.
You can also find us at courtsplumbing.com, search us on Google, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, T-Talk, and YouTube.
Like, subscribe, and share please.

(01:28):
Brown Friday came early for me, came on Thanksgiving.
Not you though.
Well, it wasn't me.
Well, you always have a packed house.
It was a packed house. My grandmother brought her cousin and he unleashed the beast on the toilet.
Did you use just too much toilet paper or?

(01:50):
No.
It's just no.
No, no.
It wasn't.
So it was organic and raw.
What's the American standard power flush toilet?
What's the name of that model?
Starts with a V.
Velocity or something like that?
Something like that.
The only thing that can stop with what he created.
I couldn't get it with the plunger, so I put tape over it.

(02:11):
I put tape over it because it wouldn't go with the plunger.
And I said, okay, tomorrow I'm going to go get the auger from work and I'll unclog it then.
Nobody uses this toilet and my dad goes, what do I have a plumber for if you can't unclog it now?
So he puts on a pair of gloves and he goes hands deep into the toilet and just starts scooping stuff out into a bucket.

(02:32):
I'm like, no, plumbers don't.
We get dirty, but we don't do that.
Was he gagging?
Huh?
Was he like gagging?
No, my dad, I don't know if this is where I got it from, but not caring of poop smells.
But he just went to town and I'm like, no, I still have to eat Thanksgiving dinner.
I'm not doing that.

(02:53):
Yeah, that's aggressive.
Yeah, I mean.
He doesn't care.
My dad is, my dad.
You know what bothers me when you go to someone's house, you ever go to someone's house and they don't have a plunger in any bathroom?
Yeah, that's, it makes no sense.
I don't understand how like you've been living your whole life.
How do you not have a plunger?
You never clog this thing up?
I feel like that's a new homeowner thing though, where they don't.

(03:14):
To not have a plunger?
Because it's trendy to not have a plunger?
Not that it's trendy.
I just don't think they like new homeowners don't know these things.
Like we had Rod on the last podcast and like, and he was giving people tips on, you know, like house flippers and things that you should kind of know or look for.
House flippers don't know anything.
You know, like we talk about all the time too, which we still have to do the 10 no house and, you know, for a new homeowner.

(03:38):
Top five for a new homeowner.
That's right guys.
You gotta watch out.
We're going to start recording top five lists.
Top five things you should know how to do as yourself as a homeowner.
Top five things you should never touch.
Top five things you should call a plumber for right away.
That's a whole series you can do.
Yeah.
And it's no offense to like the new homeowners, but if you're calling us over for a flapper, I feel like as, which we do get a lot, I feel like as a man, you should know how to change your flapper.

(04:08):
I will change it for you.
Pre-requisites.
Yeah.
I'll change it for you, but you know.
I will listen.
No job too small has been our logo for a long time.
Yeah.
I don't mind doing them, but that's in the top five lists of what you should know how to do as a homeowner.
It's going to save you money because there's a, it's like if you go, remember we had a tattoo artist on, on the show.

(04:30):
Yeah.
He goes, I have a minimum.
It's $200 minimum.
I don't care if I'm putting a little line on you.
Yeah.
It's $200.
So a flapper is what?
$4 from Home Depot?
Not anymore.
And you, well, okay.
$8 from Home Depot.
You pop it in, you pop it out.
Yeah.
But we have to charge the minimum to get there.
You're, you're what, 260 for a flapper?

(04:51):
Everybody should know.
Everybody should know like what you said.
It is about $150 just for me to come into work and turn the van on that you, that you bought.
Yeah.
It's $150 just for me to do that.
What do you mean?
I was just, you guys weren't even here that long.
I think it's different.
People don't understand the different, they don't understand that part of the business.
They don't understand that, you know, you come to somebody's house to fix a problem.

(05:13):
That costs money.
Yeah.
Even if I don't do anything, you know, let's say I just give you an estimate.
It still costs us money to come to your house to do something.
Now we're not going to charge you for that.
If I just gave you an estimate, you know, we do free estimates, but it costs money for
us to do that.
Exactly.
You know, so it costs money to drive to your house.
This is what people, the somebody goes, because I argue this is not wise by the way, if you

(05:37):
own a business, all my social media accounts are business.
Okay.
But I'll debate people on small business pages and blue collar pages and stuff.
And they're like, well, that's just like, you know, that's just cost you should eat
as a business owner.
It's like, what do you think a business is?
Every cost is transferred to the customer.
That, and again, most people don't understand other businesses.

(05:59):
Like let's say you go get an oil changer, you go to a mechanic.
Okay.
You're driving to the mechanic.
He's got a stand, he's got a station, he's got a shop that you bring it to.
It's not that he's coming to you.
Exactly.
You know, so it doesn't have a rolling shop.
Exactly.
You know, so this is little by little, we try to educate the public on what it is to run
a small business.
And it's not especially in North Jersey.

(06:21):
Listen, folks, we have a really, really, really special guest who knows all about running
businesses, especially in North Jersey.
Right.
This has been your territory for a long time.
We have Mike Medaille from Total Comfort, Plumbing, Heating and Air.
Did I get that right?
Total Comfort out of Westwood.
Out of Westwood.
But you have a resume.

(06:42):
Everywhere I go, everyone knows Mike.
Mike is the ultimate don of the plumbing industry in North Jersey.
The Godfather of Plumbing.
The Godfather of Plumbing.
I mean, you have established a name.
I've been in the industry for 10 years, my uncle talks about you constantly.
You've established a name, you've established a reputation.

(07:05):
And that's like, it's something I think every plumber or at least contractor should strive
to instead of just getting by.
Because we love it.
A lot of guys that just get by.
Oh yeah.
But I think in my opinion, and I hate to take this intro too long, but I want to say this.
I think over the past couple of years, there has been a blue collar revolution where guys

(07:29):
in our industry, electricians, we're starting to realize our worth.
No doubt.
Especially since COVID.
Oh yeah.
But Mike, thanks for coming on, man.
I'm glad to be here.
I've watched your podcast, listening to your podcasts and that makes me feel good.
Yeah.
And I have that kind of a reputation only because of what I give back to the industry, not just

(07:54):
take from the industry.
I've been involved in association business and helping other contractors understand business
and help them try to be successful for many, many years.
Matter of fact, that great personal expense and frustration.
It's frustrating.
It is.

(08:15):
It is because you're trying to help somebody.
I've been trying to recruit people into plumbing associations for so many years and they look
at me like I'm a pain in the butt.
Well, why?
Well, you bothered me about this before.
What's the importance of the plumbing?
Yeah, talk about that.
What's the importance?
Why do you want to put people in?
Because some of younger guys, I think, kind of not scoff at the idea of the association.

(08:39):
I think they think that's like the older guy type thing to do.
But obviously it's importance.
It's not.
It's not a club.
It's a business.
It's a business association.
It's a great place to learn business, to learn how to run a business and to get questions
answered because most guys, when they start out, they've got lots of questions and they

(09:03):
don't know where to get answers.
And here you've got a room full of resources that people are willing to share information
to raise the bar, raise the, you know, what a cliche, raise the bar of the industry, okay?
So that these are not just people who've created a job for themselves.

(09:28):
They've created a business and they're professionals.
Right.
Okay?
So you're going to mention the toilet thing and the flapper thing.
Please don't learn how to change flappy hands.
Yeah, I know you're right.
You are right.
Those simple little jobs where you're in and out, you can make money from.
You know why?
People, you know, you know the tank of a toilet, the water's fresh water back there, but, you

(09:55):
know, they put that to sticking their hand in that to sticking like your father was doing.
Yeah.
Okay?
It's completely different, of course, you know.
And it's also an opportunity to talk about water treatment because most of those flappers
are destroyed by the water.
Oh yeah, you know what if the color, the color gaskets, the black tri-gasket?
Oh yeah.

(10:15):
Whatever they make those things out of, and then it gets everywhere.
You touch it with your glove.
Yeah.
I think we have, we have horrible water chemistry around here.
Oh, absolutely.
And it's, it's, I'm glad you mentioned water filtration because we pushed that because
we're in there changing faucets out every five years.
Sure.
customers like, what's wrong with you guys?
Don't you know how to do plumbing here?
It's like, I didn't manufacture this thing.

(10:37):
Well, the water's just got progressively worse.
Yeah.
As you know, the forever chemicals, the PFOAs,
the PFA, whatever's in the chlorine and chloramines
and everything. Heavy metals, all that stuff.
Yeah. You know, New Jersey's the land of pollution.
So it really is.
It ends up in the air and in the water.

(10:57):
I tell people, cause all the New York transplants
coming over here since COVID buying houses.
They come here from phenomenal water in New York City.
Delicious water.
Sure.
Because, and I tell them all the time,
listen, you guys over there,
you get your water from all the way upstate.
Right.
You get your water from that picture
that's on the Poland spring from that beautiful

(11:20):
mountain scape and it comes down to New York City.
We get our water from underneath us.
And just imagine the runoff, all that stuff.
Oh, the runoff is incredible.
And look at, I mean, in our area alone, the runoff,
you talk about fertilizers and golf courses.
It would have, how many golf courses are there
in the area, you know?
And they all run into the reservoirs.

(11:41):
Yep.
Okay. So it's an opportunity for us to help the public
because they're aware of how bad the water is
and they look to us to resolve those problems.
Yeah.
Okay.
And that's okay.
It's okay to make money at it.
Absolutely.
But it's also, but it puts the burden,

(12:03):
and I'm not complaining about this,
it should motivate companies and business owners,
especially the small type of guy,
to continually educate yourself.
Oh yeah.
That's super important.
Well, back to the association thing.
It's all about education.
It's all about sharing.
And it's all about protecting homeowners

(12:23):
from handymen and whoever who may attempt
to do this type of work and are not really skilled at it.
And could present, you know,
create all kinds of dangerous situations for homeowners.
And, you know, in their quest to save a few dollars,
they don't realize what could go wrong.
Yeah.

(12:44):
And there's so much that can go wrong.
Yeah.
Okay.
When, you know, you talk about what we're dealing with,
you know, plumbing is also our wet heating side.
Yeah.
You know, you've got a box in the basement
and it burns natural gas, flammable natural gas.
And there's, you know, high voltage electricity involved
and carbon monoxide and everything else.
Gee, you think you might want professional,

(13:06):
you know, touching that baby.
Okay.
At least once a year, check it out.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, our association helps protect the public.
Yeah.
You know, and then we do other stuff like,
we donate to a variety of charities, scholarships,
and other local pursuits.

(13:29):
What kind of scholarships?
Yeah.
Well, you know, the Saadjian Herbeck Memorial Fund
that Jamie Hodges, his son who died in Afghanistan.
Oh.
Okay.
They have a memorial scholarship
and we donate money to them like crazy.
Okay.
And that money goes right to the scholarship.
It's a $2,500 scholarship for kids in Westwood.

(13:53):
Okay.
Wow.
Is it specific to trades or is it just to go to university?
I believe it's, oh no, it's to universities.
Okay.
You know, we just discussed that,
but it could probably be, it's money,
so it's not designated to any institution.
You could go to the adult school down at Bergen Tech

(14:15):
and pay whatever you have to to learn how to do plumbing
or HVAC or electrical.
Well, we talked about, we talk about that stuff all the time
and off camera we talked about it.
You said you went to college for a long period of time.
Very long.
Where'd you go?
Well.
It was like Van Wilder.
I started out in TNEC, okay?
And then I was, it was a different time.

(14:37):
It was the early 70s.
It was 1970, okay?
And I ended up going out West
and transferring around to different schools,
but I ended up coming back home,
coming back to Fairleigh Dickinson
and graduating from their engineering school.
And that's how I got my plumbing license.
Oh.
Because in, at the time, and it's still today,

(15:00):
if you have a degree in engineering,
you, all you need is was one year experience in the trade
and you qualified to sit down and take the test.
Now, I was a civil engineering.
Now you have to be in some form of plumbing engineering.

(15:22):
Like if you're an electrical engineer,
you can't sit for the plumbing test anymore.
If you're a manufacturing industrial engineer,
it has to be related.
I think it's either civil or plumbing
and you could sit for the test.
So I had been exposed to it my entire life.
My dad was a service manager for a fuel oil company

(15:44):
in the Bronx.
That's where I was born.
Okay.
And I grew up in the Bronx until I was 14 years old.
So you know the story.
You're 10 years old, 12 years old.
You're coming with me, handy this, all that.
Take this, you know.
Clean up fittings.
All the not so pleasant jobs you got to do.

(16:05):
Okay.
So I did a lot of that.
You know, 12, 13 years.
You were off from school for the summer.
He's in the fuel oil business.
So what are you doing?
You're changing fuel oil boilers.
The worst, black soot and the worst.
So you got, this was late seventies.
You got your license.

(16:25):
I got my license in 79 because I graduated.
Remember I was in college for 10 years.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I had a real good time.
Doing that decade long degree over there.
Yeah.
College in the seventies must have been wild.
It's a great time to be in college.
You know, we've had a couple of guys on that said that.
Like, and you know, the nineties just started to change

(16:47):
when they just started jacking up tuition.
And we talk at, listen, I don't want to offend you
or anything, but we talk about at this point,
it's a total scam.
Oh yeah.
Like you go, listen, you need, you need,
if you're going to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer,
you need a degree, you need to go there.
You need to sit down, do autocad, learn all that stuff,

(17:08):
learn, you know, right.
Whatever doctors need to learn.
But I got, I have relatives in school for what?
Just like communications, we're just a general liberal arts
degree, $50,000 a year for what it has become.
And it's, it's driven home by the guidance counselors

(17:31):
because we actually figured it out the other day.
Schools, high schools, they get to put that on their stats.
Like this is how many kids we got into college.
Oh yeah.
Push, push, push, push for college.
Doesn't matter if you don't have no idea
what you're going to do.
$150,000 later, compounding interest.
You're just, you're working for the family business anyway.

(17:51):
Yeah.
So we try to, and there's this,
we try to really push that, listen,
for the last 30 years, everyone went to college
and now look at everyone has a degree
and no one has a job.
So tradesmen are hungry for people who want to come in,
learn the trade, learn the business, learn how to sell.

(18:13):
I want to get, actually get back to,
did you want to add something to that?
Well, I think according to the Department of Labor,
half the jobs in the country don't require a college degree.
Yeah.
Okay.
And probably you're looking at maybe,
I would say conservatively 70, 80% of the people
out of high school are heading to college.

(18:33):
Right.
Okay.
For what?
No idea.
Jobs that don't exist.
And colleges have no incentive at all to keep the cost down.
No.
Their incentive is to drive the cost up.
Okay.
And it's that whole cycle, like you mentioned,
with the towns, with the, oh, we got a great school system,
how many people go to college?
Oh yeah.

(18:54):
So now we can charge more for our property taxes
because we have the best school system
and we pay our teachers the most money.
And it's a real cycle.
Hey, think about that.
It's a vicious cycle.
It is a vicious cycle.
And the kids are the ones who suffer.
Yeah.
Okay.
They graduate with jobs, with the degrees to do nothing.
Yeah.

(19:15):
Well, I always say that most people,
first of all, that most people at 18,
they have no idea what they want to do with their life.
But I also believe that most...
Oh, I'm the poster child for that.
For that.
Yeah.
It took me 10 years to figure it out.
Well, you know, you're a case where I guess your degree
did give you a lot of leverage in the field that you chose.

(19:37):
What do you think about an engineering degree nowadays?
You think it's a little bit different
or you don't really keep up with that kind of stuff?
I think that an engineering degree
is still a worthwhile commodity to have
because with science and with the whole digital economy
and everything, it's all revolves around

(19:59):
science, math, engineering.
Yeah.
It's important.
Okay.
You know, China and Japan and India are pumping out
engineers like crazy.
Oh, yeah.
United States is pumping out BS degrees, BAs,
to do nothing.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then manage them with Wendy's.
It makes me so angry.

(20:20):
I was watching, I'm watching, and this whole thing about,
oh, well, now we're gonna try to pass bills
where you don't have to pay for college
and college is free, nothing is free.
Nothing is free.
Nothing.
Okay.
I just, this past year, I went to college for two years.
I didn't graduate.
College was not for me.
Right.

(20:40):
I should have not gone.
I didn't know what else to do with my life.
I had the opportunity, so I took up every federal loan I could
and that's how they get you.
They say, I'll just pull out the federal loans.
Don't worry, you don't have to pay starting.
You don't have to start paying them back six months
after you graduate.
But last year, I finally, I'm 43 years old,
I finally finished paying off my student loans.
That's amazing.

(21:00):
And now.
And you only went for two years.
I only went for two years.
And now they're gonna make us who didn't go to college
or already paid for college, but paid for it again.
Well, how much was college?
How much was your university when you went?
When you went.
It was probably a tenth of what it is now.
Yeah.

(21:20):
Maybe less.
You could pay it off a semester with a summer job.
Yeah.
Can you imagine if you had gotten a four-year degree,
you'd be on the hook to your 60.
Oh my God, yeah, I know.
So do you watch the Dave Ramsey podcast?
No, I don't.
No, he's the guy who's, he's a financial advisor.
Yeah, I know of him.
And he just had, I was listening to his podcast
the other day at a caller who was making like $250,000 a year,

(21:44):
but went to college, got his doctorate, whatever.
And he's 45 years old and he still got $150,000 worth of debt
that he just can't pay off with all of his life,
you know, with all the life's expenses.
And that's just kind of what happens.
That whole twist on it with, okay,
to wipe out student loan debt is a real slap in the face.

(22:06):
I mean, for, you know, people who paid for it
and had their own pockets, okay,
I didn't have any grants or whatever they call them,
you know what I'm talking about.
Yeah, all those loans, those scholarships,
they give whatever you can.
I didn't have the scholarship, you know,
I just paid it out of pocket.
That's it.

(22:27):
And really, really the first five years
of that whole experience was just killing time.
The last five years are the ones that counted.
Yeah.
And I was running, I started a business prior to graduating.
I didn't have a plumbing license,
but I was doing HVAC because I had a background

(22:48):
in refrigeration and air conditioning.
So I was doing residential air conditioning
and some small refrigeration jobs for, you know,
restaurants and diners,
no big manufacturing refrigeration, whatever.
So I was doing that and going to school at night,
at fairly, to eventually get the degree, okay?

(23:10):
I didn't go back to school like, you know,
nine to five, you know, five days a week.
It was squeeze courses in whenever you can.
I also feel like the college experience nowadays,
a lot of people can't work at the same time
because college is also a full-time job.
It really is.
Like my brother, my brother went to school for his doctorate.

(23:32):
You know, he went to the medical field.
I mean, he also did gymnastics,
but he was a little bit behind in that field
because gymnastics and school took all of his time.
He had no time to, you know,
get a job on the side.
There was no time to, it was barely time to sleep.
I mean, he likes to live his life like that though.
He does, I mean, he's a very stressed, high-strung person,

(23:52):
but I also feel like the pressure,
the pressure and all of the work,
the workload that they give you in college
is very different than it used to be.
I think it becomes more of a full-time job
and you kind of lose the work motivation
to do something outside of college.
But-
It's a totally, every aspect is,

(24:12):
it's a totally different world than the 1900s from today.
I mean, just a high school experience alone,
you know, kids are so stressed out
because they're, you know, they're bombarded with homework
and then they're bombarded with, you know,
the whole college thing is to get your break sheet together,
which, you know, who do you, you know, volunteer for?

(24:35):
What are you doing for the community?
You know, what other stuff are you doing outside of school?
What sports are you doing, you know?
We need people, I mean, Max says it all the time,
after high school, just work for a summer,
just work for a year, get a part-time job with a plumber,
get a part-time job with, at a deli,
go find someone that kind of interests you

(24:56):
if you wanna learn food, if you wanna learn contract,
if you wanna learn plumbing.
We're, like I said, and you know it,
we're desperate for good workers
who wanna put in the time and learn the business
and not just float by.
We're desperate for somebody who wants to come in.
Like, I'll bring in guys and have them work for me
for five, six years and then send them off for their own

(25:17):
business, I'm fine with that.
I'm not looking for lifers here.
I'm looking to raise up good plumbers in the industry
and go out and flourish on your own.
You know?
The dynamic has changed somewhat though.
I talked, I'm on the advisory board down at Birk & Tech
on the plumbing advisory board and the HVAC advisory board.

(25:40):
So I got to talk to the day students
who are actually, got skin in the game,
they're paying money to go and learn how to do this stuff.
And I'm giving them some direction.
Unlike the apprenticeship school, which is at night, okay?
Those people are generally people that expect to

(26:00):
get a license and perhaps go into business.
And I'd like to get a chance to talk to them as well.
But I talked to the guys during the day
and I advised them of all the different career paths
that there are once you graduate.
Are you gonna do commercial work?
Are you gonna try to get into the union?

(26:21):
Are you gonna do commercial service, commercial rough?
Okay, residential service, residential rough plumbing.
Okay, you wanna work for a vendor.
You wanna work for a manufacturer.
You wanna be a rep.
There's so many things that you could do.
And they think they go into plumbing school
to learn the plumbing and then they're gonna fall
into a job when they get out, okay?

(26:42):
Not everybody's cut out to be in their own business, okay?
That's very true.
And my experience with Gen Ys and Gen Zs, okay?
Because I live by all the different generations, okay?
I've got the whole gamut working for me, okay?
And the Gen Ys and Gen Zs, man,
they don't want the responsibility.

(27:03):
They wanna come to work, work, I don't wanna say nine to five
because they are a little more flexible than that,
but they wanna define day, okay?
And they want five days a week
and they prefer those to be weekdays, okay?
Not weekends.
And then they wanna leave and have a clear head, okay?

(27:23):
And you can't blame them for that.
Not everybody's cut out to be in their own business
because all that stuff goes out the window
when you're in your own business, okay?
So I try to let them know.
And even at that last meeting we were talking about
at the Brownstone where the Ronnie brought all his students,
those were all fourth year apprentices, okay?

(27:45):
And I had a table full of them.
I made sure I sat at the table with all the kids, okay?
I call them kids, some of them were 30, 40 years old.
So to me they're kids.
Yeah, I'm fine with that.
Okay, so I'm old.
You're young at heart.
I'm telling them all, man,
you've got so many opportunities,

(28:05):
so many ways to go with this thing.
Ronnie is steering them like you gotta get a license
and go into business.
I'm thinking these guys aren't prepared for it.
Some of them will never work out.
Why set them up for failure, okay?
And who needs that black eye to the industry, okay?
So the worst thing is when somebody goes out,

(28:26):
goes into business, takes a bunch of money,
can't make it happen, and then goes out of business.
Every warranty that he ever gave out is worth garbage now
and it's like, oh man, my guy was here
and now he's out of business, I can't reach him.
Who needs that, okay?
So I try to direct them.
There's lots of opportunity.
They could come to work for you,

(28:47):
they could come to work for me,
they could have a very good living, okay?
And they can have the freedom that they want to do,
pursue their other hobbies or whatever.
They're not married to a business, okay?
Because you're married to a businessman,
you sacrifice family, you sacrifice a lot of other pursuits.
You sacrifice everything.

(29:07):
So you know the story I took over from my uncle
nine years ago, all right?
I don't fully own it yet.
He still has a slight hand in it.
But I'm running the thing and he's my right hand man
and he'll tell you, you see.
Yeah.
There are days where like-
My soul is dying.
Like, you know what I mean?

(29:29):
Sure.
Like you have two days in a row where 19 people
are calling back from some stupid part you put in
or there's, you know, like there's just weeks where
there's just some people who cannot handle that.
I can barely handle that.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah, well, I mean, listen, I'm just,

(29:51):
I'm just like you said, his right hand man
and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night like,
ugh, you know, seeing things because you feel it,
you feel it and I think that's what's great
about working so close to the business owner.
You know, I don't know how your relationship
was with your employees's, but when you work real close,
you learn a lot of, first of all, the business side

(30:11):
of things because you can come into this industry
with wide eyes and being like, oh my God,
I really want to own my own business one day
and you know, I want to have these big dreams
and these aspirations and like you said,
some people are cut out for it and then you can see it
and you can just take a step back and you go, whoa,
this is a stressful life and whatever business,
not just plumbing, it's anything.

(30:33):
I mean, my father owns his own business,
I see what that does to somebody, you know,
my dad used to be good looking and have long hair.
Now he's fat and bald.
It's like, it does it to somebody.
Shorter.
You got a mirror right here.
You know, we have, we've gone to school with some guys,
so I want to touch base with what you just said.

(30:55):
I'm very open with him.
He knows, he has access to our number sheets.
He knows exactly our expenses.
I got the bank account too.
I don't just care.
No, he doesn't, but he knows the ins and outs.
And listen, if you stayed with courts
for the rest of your life, that's great,
but I want to make sure that when he goes out

(31:16):
and if he starts his own business,
I don't want people to be like, oh, who taught you?
You know what I mean?
That's like, that's a dig at us.
Courts plumbing, like what kind of guys
are you putting out in the world?
So he knows our break-even.
He knows what our, he knows what it has to be.
Hourly, what we have to make,
but we've gone to school with guys who,

(31:37):
they've been there for 10 years
and they don't even know how to write up an invoice.
There's one old guy that'll go around,
he'll drive around, he'll write up all the estimates,
he'll sell the job and then the guys just go do the work.
They have no idea.
Well, I'm sure you've had a lot of workers for you
that over the years that have gone on
to run their own business.
Oh, sure, they've gone on,
ran their own business.
First of all, if you're gonna hire people,

(32:00):
they're not gonna be able to make you money
unless they understand what you need to charge
and why it is you need to charge that.
So once they get that, they understand that,
they feel more comfortable charging what they have to charge
and explaining it to the customer.
When I got into it, it was old school,

(32:20):
everything was a hush-hush, quiet,
don't cash show them the books or whatever,
they'll go out on their own
and then they'll be your competition.
You want them to go out on their own,
you want them to be good competition,
not spiraling down and lowering the bar down
to race to the bottom.

(32:41):
And that's a big difference between today,
today to be in business, we're very fortunate,
and the new guys are very fortunate
that they have the big private equity companies here.
That's a plus because those people in those companies

(33:01):
have taught a lot of people what had her own a business.
This is how it's supposed to be done.
When I got into the business,
the business was primarily populated by mom and pop,
one, two, three, four million shops.
Okay?
They dictated what the price would be.
Okay, what you could charge.

(33:22):
And most of them didn't have a clue
as to how to figure out a rate.
It was the old, called the competition
and just set your price a little lower.
Okay, so you could get all the business.
Right, right, right.
Okay, so that was the race to the bottom.
And that's the way it was for many years.
It was very difficult.
We went flat rate because of that in like 1989.

(33:46):
Oh wow.
Did you really that long ago?
Oh yeah, I met Frank Blau when I was like 87.
I was like 37 years old.
I was like a little kid.
If you're the godfather of North Jersey plumbing,
he's the godfather of flat rate, would you say?
Oh yeah, he's the godfather of the world of plumbing.
Right?
Oh yeah, he made a lot of people understand business.

(34:07):
Okay, and what they had to do in order to be successful.
Okay, and he had a huge impact on me.
But we went flat rate at that time
because we couldn't compete with the time in material guys.
Because you were shopped as a commodity.
Okay, what's your hourly rate?

(34:27):
What's your hourly rate?
Okay, I don't know.
And guys try to hide it by marking up material.
And then of course Home Depot comes along
and wipes that out.
You come walk up material like that anymore.
So now, if I'm coming into this business,
the bar is now set by private equity.
Okay, and...

(34:48):
Give me an example of private equity.
What do you mean by that?
That's gold metal.
Okay, gotcha.
Glenn the plumber.
Gotcha.
AJ Perry.
Okay, and Silla, who's coming into the area.
Gives us way more wiggle room to be honest.
Oh yeah, well they know what they have to charge
in order to make money.

(35:08):
Okay, so they've raised the bar.
People know that, oh gee, gold metal wasn't here before me.
I can, you know, you shouldn't charge based on, you know...
You're right.
I know what you're saying.
But really, in order to capture your costs
and make a fair profit, you know,
10, 15% net profit is not unrealistic.

(35:31):
Right.
It's gonna, your numbers are gonna be up there.
Okay, you're not making money in this business
at 200 bucks an hour.
Okay, you're not.
You're losing money whether you know it or not.
Okay?
And it will manifest itself.
It'll hit you down the line.
Yeah.
I've purchased a number of companies that operate like that.
And, you know, they had to get out

(35:55):
because they were not making money.
They were losing money.
Okay, so that's what I mean by private equity.
Yeah, I gotcha.
Those guys have raised the bar.
And compounded by the fact that the Gen Ys and the Gen Zs
don't want to be in business.
They want a good job.
Okay, they want to make big money

(36:17):
and with minimal discomfort.
Yeah.
Okay, which is cool because we need to hire them.
Yeah.
Okay.
In 2023, approximately 500 plumbing licenses
did not renew in New Jersey.
They either died, aged out, retired to Florida,

(36:40):
or just gave up their license.
Okay.
So, like 497.
49 new licenses were handed out.
Yeah.
So, he gives that stat all the time.
Yeah.
One in 10.
For every, yeah.
For every seven.
For every seven that leaves.
For every seven to 10 plumbers that
kick the bucket or retire, only one comes up.

(37:00):
So, right now there's 5100 active licenses in New Jersey.
Okay, there's 13,000 numbers.
Okay, but it's 5100 active licenses.
And it's a problem.
Okay.
It's fortunate for us because there's not much competition.

(37:21):
Right.
You know, but in the long run, it's an industry problem.
It is going to be a problem.
It's going to be a societal problem.
Yeah.
These are the jobs, electrical, plumbing.
This is what makes the world go round.
It really does.
It's what makes society propel forward.
American standard, what's their tagline?
The plumber protects the health of a nation
with that really cool logo that they've got.
Sure.

(37:42):
Right.
So, so smartly, I wish they hadn't.
I would love to put it up on the wall.
Yeah, what's his name?
Norman Rockwell.
Yeah, that's right.
The guy, the plumber's sitting on those pile of rocks.
Yeah.
Next to the lead torch.
It's true though.
Jordan Peterson says the same thing.
He's like, plumbers save more lives than doctors.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
But it's a problem when, as society progresses,

(38:06):
you need people to come up and keep the industry
same growing like in a V shape to grow with the population.
And all contracting is going down.
So it's going to be a wake up call for society
when you have to wait two months for a plumber.
Yeah.
Well, I think that's what's important about
what you've done and what you're doing is

(38:28):
now that there's less and less plumbers,
you have to know your value and your worth way more.
Because you can't stretch yourself
in every single direction, live just to work, you know,
and charge like you said, the $200 an hour.
And what are you doing?
You're running around like a chicken
with your head cut off.
Yeah.
A slave to your work instead of like what you've done,

(38:51):
charging right for your business, hiring good guys,
and creating a good environment
for the up and coming plumbing industry.
Creating a good job, a good job.
It's like, it pays well.
It's got great benefits.
Look at you take our truck home,
just go back and forth.
You don't even need your own vehicle.
I'm going to buy your clothes.
You're going to have your own uniforms or whatever.

(39:12):
All right.
There'll be a retirement plan for you.
Okay.
You know, you got medical insurance and whatever.
So these are pretty good jobs.
Yeah.
People have to pay for that.
Oh, sure.
The customer has to pay for that.
You're welcome to pay for some schmuck to go in there,
fly by night your job and that's it and bounce out.

(39:33):
House flippers are the worst.
They'll come in, they flip a house.
In two years, we're fixing everything in the house.
But a customer, you're welcome to give that guy business.
Hope that it doesn't fail.
But I want guys to come in here
with clean uniforms, nice attitudes,
who I can afford to educate,

(39:54):
who I can afford to put on the job
and make sure that they do a good job.
And plus they have to live around here.
We got to live in your area.
You know what I mean?
I'm not commuting from Scranton.
It's not happening.
You're not going to get somebody who can live in Bergen County
and pay them peanuts, man.
It's not an inexpensive place to live.
So it's the cost of doing business.

(40:16):
It's the fact that there's no new plumbers coming up.
And I don't want to say it's a gold mine,
but there's a huge opportunity for people
who want to be entrepreneurs.
This is a great place to go, plumbing specifically.
We want to take a break real quick.
We're coming up on almost 45 minutes.
But when we come back,
I want to touch base on your history,

(40:38):
your business history, the companies back and forth,
how that went down.
But you know what, before we take a break,
I want to bring up the association again.
Everything you said about the association,
I 100% agree with, but also networking is huge
in that guy's bouncing ideas off.
And what about standing up for the industry

(41:00):
to local governments?
Well, there's local governments
and there's the state government.
And actually, on the federal level,
there's other associations that are nationwide.
The State League of Master Plumbers
that I talk about a lot is basically a New Jersey operation.

(41:21):
But protecting the public by standing up for the codes
and the safety stuff that we have to adhere to,
that in their quest to be a good guy's politician,
sometimes don't realize what they're doing
when they dumb things down.
Okay, like, oh yeah, anybody can do this.

(41:44):
Anybody can run gas lines.
Oh yeah, it's okay.
Okay, what, Jesus, I mean,
I'm talking about the most explosive stuff in the house.
And fortunately, through some association actions
that the burning of gas pipe is basically codified with,

(42:06):
okay, so HVAC guys got it also,
but plumbers got it back as well.
So now handymen don't run gas lines.
Okay, for right, well they shouldn't.
They shouldn't, but they.
Right, but there's other things like that.
They're constantly things being chipped at.
You know, listen, we talked about it

(42:27):
before the water treatment people,
they wanna do plumbing, okay?
Right.
They know water treatment, they don't know plumbing.
They didn't go to school and put it into time that we did.
Okay, so, you know, there may be politicians
who, the guy's brother-in-law is a politician
who runs the water treatment business.
They can you help me out with this, you know?
And the next thing you know, handymen can do with it.

(42:49):
Yeah, it's a game of thrones.
But if you're like, I wanted to make this point
that if you, Max said a lot of young guys,
young guys in the industry,
they don't feel that they feel the association
is like an old man's thing, but it's really not.
Because we kind of have to band together to fight this.
I don't wanna get all, you know.

(43:10):
Right.
You literally, it's a literal government beast
that'll come down and dog your industry down to nothing.
Sure.
If these younger guys, they would rather just be
on an island.
It's not gonna work out in the long run.
I always think the association is way more important
than guys give a credit for.
Oh yeah.
You know?
I agree.
All right, let's take a break.
Okay.
We'll be right back.
Guys, listen, if you're interested in coming

(43:31):
onto Plumb Bumps Podcast, it's a lot of fun.
It's really relaxed.
If you're a small business owner in Bergen County
or even surrounding Bergen County or an entrepreneur,
we'd love to have you on.
You're gonna go to courtsplumbing.com.
You're gonna click the podcast logo.
You're gonna scroll down and you're gonna fill out
Be a Guest application and we'll have you on.
It's a lot of fun.
Also, we wanna give a shout out to our sponsor this season,

(43:53):
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(45:23):
Jigsaw PMR, Restoring Peace of Mind.
No amount of preparation needs me to be ready to depart.
Believe me, I own a new one with that which really floats
about and there might be folks.
Welcome back to Plum Bumps podcast, the blue collar

(45:44):
tradesme show where we talk about small business
and entrepreneurship, the Everyman's podcast.
I'm getting better at that.
So I had a Monday from hell.
I had a weekend from hell.
Thanksgiving weekend.
Don't buy shop right ground beef.
Don't buy meats from shop right.
Shop right meats.
I don't care if they hear this.

(46:04):
They suck.
Meats suck.
I've made tacos on Sunday.
Tacos on Thanksgiving?
No, I'm sorry.
Last Sunday I made tacos.
The first bite, I was so happy to make home tacos.
The first bite, there was like a bone in the ground beef.
Split my tooth in half.

(46:25):
I didn't know how bad it was.
It was bearable.
I go to the dentist later that week.
He goes, all right, yeah, it's got to be pulled.
It's split.
We can get you in in two weeks.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving.
What is this, Canada?
Two weeks?
I don't know.
Two weeks.
He goes, I can't get you in for another two weeks.
By Saturday after Thanksgiving, I was in agony.

(46:48):
I know I've seen you with the tooth pain before.
The worst pain in the world with no, there's no relief.
And you come out of the dentist office
with a cigarette and a Coke still.
He doesn't learn.
I waited.
He doesn't learn.
I just want a Coke and a cigarette.

(47:08):
I was sitting in that chair and the dentist
is, you know, before he puts no vacane in it
and to numb it and everything, he's
like poking and prodding to see how bad it is.
And he like used this tool to like open up
the fracture a little bit.
I feel like they do that on purpose.
I went through the ceiling.
When they know that you have a sensitive spot, they know it.

(47:29):
And for you to take a tooth and put a tool in it
and then just maneuver it.
I think he likes to see you writhe in pain.
I was laying there and he goes and I go,
and I just mushed the faces of the two people
and I just leaned forward.
I'll never forget that feeling.
That was, you ever seen the movie Marathon, Man?
Oh, yeah.

(47:49):
With Dustin Hoffman.
Oh, yeah.
If there's a scene, there's two scenes in that movie,
they don't show much.
But it will haunt you.
You should watch that movie.
All right.
I can't remember what happened.
That's where they drill in holes in his teeth.
They're drilling holes in his teeth.
Yeah.
Is it a horror movie or is it just like a dentist?

(48:10):
I don't even remember what it's about.
It was torturing him.
Yeah.
There was like two scenes where they're just.
More scene?
No.
Or movie?
No.
No.
It's some kind.
I don't remember what it was about.
But those two scenes I remember seeing when I was a kid
and they will haunt you.
You know that it hurt when your mind goes to a movie
scenario from the 70s where you're like.

(48:31):
So the dentist was using the equivalent of a dental yarning
iron, you know, when you're packing down cement and oak
them, letting it open.
That's just terrible.
Huthpain is the worst.
Sorry, women, but I don't believe you.
I'm sorry.
Huthpain is the worst.
OK.
I can't.

(48:53):
I'm telling you, I believe they get off to it.
I went to the school.
I went to the school to Bergen, not Bergen Tech, bring.
After you.
Didn't you go to FDU?
No, I went to Bergen Academies or Bergen Tech
or whatever it is in parameters because I'm a cheapo
and it's $35 for a cleaning instead of $150 for a cleaning.

(49:14):
And so I go there and it's a student
and this teacher comes over while the student's
doing the cleaning or whatever.
And I had an area that was a little bit more sensitive,
not a cavity.
And the teacher starts like digging into it.
The student was very gentle, but the teacher
starts digging into it.
And you can see me like, you know, in pain.
And she keeps doing it.

(49:35):
I'm like, no, no, no.
You know there's something there.
So either fix it, tell me about it, or stop poking at it.
Yeah.
So this is the beginning of what you
were describing of the training of how to find a pain point
and really get on.
Yeah.
I just saw the job.
Yeah, close the show.
Folks, we're here with Mike Medaille,

(49:57):
plumbing extraordinaire, plumbing guru, plumbing
godfather, everything you want to say.
You tell us an interesting story about that,
the movie Godfather.
About the godfather.
Yeah, that was my uncle.
And I believe it was Godfather too.
And Michael Corleone's having his son baptized.
And during that scene, his goons were out there

(50:19):
killing all his competition off.
And the scene went on for about at least 10, 15 minutes.
And the priest was actually my uncle.
That is so funny.
Joey Joseph Medaille.
Yeah.
Joey Medaille.
You're going to get upset at me right now.
Hollywood is just New Jersey with celebrities.
It's not even that great.

(50:39):
Celebrity plumbing.
I've never seen the Godfather.
No.
Oh, my God.
So you have so much interesting stuff to watch then.
I know.
You can one, two, three.
You know I haven't seen it because you say that.
You'd have that reaction every time.
I know you haven't seen some big movies, but the Godfather.
Who hasn't seen the Godfather?
It's just like on the list of movies that you have to see.
It's cinema history.

(51:00):
I guess people say it's the perfect movie.
I'll watch it.
Yeah.
Eventually.
So now you know during the scene, you know, Bob.
I'm going to watch it now.
I have to watch it now.
Well, that means you've got to watch one and then two.
And there's the third.
Yeah, the third.
The third was, yeah.
Well, that's how they usually do it.
They're stretching it out.
They were stretching it out.
Yeah, they were stretching the franchise out a bit too far.

(51:21):
Listen, that's what Hollywood does.
Well, look, I'll cast in Furious 12 or something like that.
Rocky, Rocky 19.
Yeah.
He made the perfect first movie.
Oh, yeah.
The perfect.
You think Rocky is the perfect movie?
Yeah.
The perfect.
You think Rocky is the perfect movie?
Rocky was the perfect movie.
It was a low budget movie.
It was a great story.
That role was perfect for him.

(51:42):
A perfect for him.
Amazing story.
And if you ended it there, you create one of the greatest.
He's made his life on that movie.
Yeah.
His whole life on that movie.
He put his whole life on the line for that movie.
They've got to give the guy a lot of credit.
He's had like three franchises, him, that Rambo thing, you know.
Oh, yes.
He's like the most popular actor of the 80s with two movies.
Rambo series and Rocky series.

(52:02):
Yeah.
Mike, again, thanks for being here, man.
And here I am.
The Waterwork series.
The black sheep of the family, but I guess it's still worth.
Mike, you have given us snippets of wisdom.
I want to dig into your brain a little bit more,
but I kind of want to know your history of getting

(52:26):
into plumbing, like how it started.
OK.
Differences from what it is today, from what it is back then.
You said you went to college for 10 years, you were there,
and you finally broke into the plumbing industry.
What was the whole?
What was the whole catalyst for what created?
Well, like a lot of people, a lot of businesses,

(52:48):
I got into this business and immediately pursued
the worst end of the business, which
was being a subcontractor for builders, working to do additions,
add a levels, bathroom remodeling, new construction.
The worst end of the business.

(53:09):
Agreed.
OK.
I fully agree.
The easiest end.
OK.
All right.
Because there's not a lot of transactions.
It's not a lot required of you.
Setting up a service business where you have like five
transactions a day per technician.

(53:30):
If you've got 10 technicians, you've got 50 transactions going
on in one day, you'll do one transaction for a month's worth
of work with a general contractor.
But of course, they beat you up.
They take you for money.
They use you as a bank.
So right around 1982, I got started in the business.

(53:51):
It has waterworks in 1979.
That's when I incorporated as waterworks.
Prior to that, I was doing, like I told you,
air conditioning and refrigeration work.
But when I got my plumbing license in 79,
that's when I incorporated the plumbing.
And I already had the plumbing knowledge from my dad
and whatever.
So we started doing all this general contract,

(54:12):
all this subcontracting.
And in 1982, I think it was either the first or the second
Arab oil embargo that threw the country
into a massive recession.
Really bad recession.
Not as bad as the housing one.
OK.
But I'm working for about eight different building
contractors.
And one by one, they're all going belly up on me.

(54:33):
And they all owe me money.
That's scary.
OK.
I calculated that in 1982, I lost about $225,000.
In 1982 dollars.
That's a lot, yeah.
Equivalent to $14 billion.
About the budget of New Jersey.
For younger people, that's like 12 Bitcoin.

(54:57):
So I had just moved into Washington Township.
OK.
I bought this commercial piece of property
in a residential neighborhood.
And I had like 10 trucks on the road.
And each one of them had a crew.
And they were working for these building contractors.
I took eight of them and parked them inside the shop.

(55:20):
And just like shrink wrapped them.
OK.
And then swore off, ever working for a general contractor
again.
At the time, it was a wonderful time.
Because marketing meant either you put an A in the yellow pages
or you sent out direct mail.

(55:40):
That was the two forms of marketing.
That's it.
That's what it was.
So we put A's in the yellow pages and fortunately for us
at the time, the A's in the yellow pages
were seniority by alphabetic order.
OK.
Triple A plumbing.
Waterworks became triple A waterworks.
OK.
And I mean, we kept getting A's to keep the competition away.

(56:05):
And we were first in the book.
And it was amazing.
And I started doing only service work.
So that was in 83.
We did that.
And at that time, we were doing time and material just
like everybody else.
Right.
And I'm trying to figure out why I'm not making any money.
OK.
And so I'm calling everybody up.

(56:25):
You know, all my competition up.
What are you charging?
And I was setting my price somewhere around there.
You know, I didn't want to be lower.
OK.
But I didn't want to be too high.
But of course, that was as Frank Blouse says,
that's the blind leading the blind.
Because they had no idea what business was like.
So I'm stumbling my way through the 80s.
I'm hiring people.

(56:46):
And sheer strength of personality and sheer enjoyment.
People would come to work for me.
And we would have a good time.
OK.
So then I meet a guy named Doc Rusk.
Rusk Heating and Air Conditioning in Kentucky.
He was on the Honeywell Seminar Circuit.

(57:07):
And I'm a big guy, seminar guy.
I'm always looking to.
I'm in trade magazines constantly.
I'm going to seminars.
I'm going to trainings all the time.
So I end up at this, had a double your business
with a 10% profit.
That was the name of it.
And Doc Rusk was the trainer.

(57:28):
OK.
Where was he out of?
He was out in Kentucky.
Kentucky.
That's right.
And he's selling heating and air conditioning like crazy
in Kentucky.
And he's making all kinds of money.
And he's thrown around his financials and whatever.
And now I'm starting to get an education on what the hell?
What do these things call financials?
OK.

(57:49):
I mean, I'm keeping track of everything.
Looking at my bank account.
And looking at my checkbook.
OK.
And that's about it.
I got money in the checkbook this week.
I'm doing OK.
All right.
But now I'm starting to see, well, gee, here's
a thing called the income statement.
And it shows me what my expenses are.

(58:10):
Right.
And the top line doesn't match the bottom line.
What's going on here?
The bottom line is supposed to be big.
OK.
So then I meet up with a guy named Frank Blau.
A guy named Rich Dutoma up in Rockland County,
any time plumbing.
He was.
That's a great name.

(58:31):
He was a pretty progressive guy.
He couldn't delegate.
He still writes articles for PHC magazine, Rich Dutoma.
And they're very, very knowledgeable articles.
And he's still going to retread in the same stuff
that Frank Blau was doing.
But it serves a good purpose because the young guys,

(58:52):
hopefully, they read these magazines.
OK.
They probably don't.
They should.
But we go to this seminar with Frank Blau.
The business of contracting.
You know, I'm always looking for this kind of stuff to learn.
OK.
So I go there.
And I get blown away by this guy, Frank Blau,
only Christmas.

(59:12):
He's calling us idiots.
He's smoking cigarettes a mile a minute on the stage.
And he's telling us that you got to understand what
your break-even cost is.
You got to understand billable hour efficiency.
You got to understand how to read a income statement.
You got to understand a balance sheet.
OK.
And you have to charge flat rate.

(59:33):
You cannot charge time and material.
You can't make money charging time and material.
Because the money you got to charge,
nobody will pay if you're going to reveal it up front like that.
So I was blown away.
And I started adapting everything.
And he had this thing called a flat rate manual.
OK.
And you could subscribe to him.

(59:54):
And he would send you the paper pages
to put in the manual with all the usual tasks,
all the usual plumbing tasks.
They're in there.
So this was already made up for me.
You just tell him what you want to charge per hour,
what you think your billable hour actually is.
You break even.
And he would make up a book that would give you a 10 or 15

(01:00:18):
or 20% profit, whatever you dictated.
So we right away subscribed to this.
OK.
And we right away went to flat rate.
And it was like the world changed.
Now, all of a sudden, we had money to buy new trucks.
We didn't have to buy used window vans and black out

(01:00:39):
the window so people couldn't look in.
And we could actually letter them.
OK.
Wow.
What a concept.
And we had money.
And we could pay people what they were worth
and give them the benefits that they needed.
So that was the beginning.
And now I'm thinking, now Frank Blau and I become great friends.

(01:01:00):
And I'm sponsoring seminars, bringing them back around.
OK.
So other people.
See, I was the president of the Bergen County Plumbing
Heating and Cooling Contracts Association at that time.
OK.
So I brought him in to show my members.
We had like 80 members in Bergen County.
This is what you need to be doing.

(01:01:21):
OK.
Some of them took it up.
Some of them didn't.
OK.
But that's what really taught me how to understand the numbers.
OK.
What was it like getting into flat rate when no one else is
doing it in your area?
It's a hard sell when no one else.
It really wasn't that difficult.
No.
Because people prefer to know what the cost of something

(01:01:45):
is going in as opposed to some nebulous things.
You know, it's time and material.
Well, I didn't really sleep well last night.
You know, I had a argument with my wife in the morning.
You know, I just.
So I'm going to take it out on you.
My ankle hurts.
I split my tooth.
Yeah?
Oh, people got charged pretty hip.
Oh, yeah, man.
Somebody's got to pay that debt.

(01:02:06):
Exactly.
So it was actually we flipped it into being a benefit of doing
business with our company.
One of the big benefits that you'll find doing business
with our company is you'll know the cost of the repair
before we even start.
We don't do time and material because it's better for you

(01:02:26):
to know the cost.
OK.
So we packaged that in.
And don't forget, we were competing.
I said this off air.
But the dynamic at that time was there was a lot of mom and pop
small shops that didn't understand business
and didn't know what they have to charge.
And the way they base their price was it would be lower

(01:02:48):
than the next guy.
Yeah.
The blind leading the blind.
The blind leading the blind on a race to the bottom.
OK.
And we didn't want to participate in that at all.
OK.
So that was our way out of it.
OK.
Of course, today it's different.
There are more larger companies that set the bar as to where

(01:03:09):
the price should be.
And so everybody benefits even the people that don't
understand business.
Right.
They know that ABC is charging this much.
All I have to do is charge a few dollars less.
But I'll be making money because they've
made sure that they're going to make money.
OK.
So I would suggest that anybody that's going into this business

(01:03:32):
have some kind of an understanding of financials,
some kind of a business background.
OK.
You don't have to go to school for four years
to get this background.
You could pick up with the internet.
You could pick this stuff up anywhere.
100%.
You can get your education off YouTube, no problem, and be fine.
Yeah.
It's true.
Yeah.
It's true.
And I do my best.

(01:03:53):
I talk to contractors all the time, every day,
telling them what to do, how to figure this stuff out.
And that exile that I had after I sold waterworks,
well, I'm kind of jumping around.
I did that waterworks thing after I got started
in the flat rate service and repair only business.

(01:04:14):
I had a run from, like, 1989, 1990, right through 2007.
Was that 27 years?
17.
Yeah.
Right?
1998 to 2007 and 17.
17 years.
OK.
To 2017.
OK.
2017 is 27.
27 years of doing flat rate service.

(01:04:40):
OK.
And I grew not at a rapid pace because I was still learning.
Yeah.
Still learning as I was going along.
So I'm having a good old time.
It's 2017.
Now I've got people running my business.
I've got, like, 38 employees and all kinds of trucks
and stuff on the road.

(01:05:00):
People are running my business for me.
Playing golf three times a week.
I'm living life, living large, and making money.
OK?
I got to say there was a brief period in there of, like,
2008, 9, 10, 11, 12, when the housing crunch hit
and the great recession.

(01:05:22):
That was a big problem.
Everyone talks about it when they come on here.
They hit everybody.
Oh, it hit hard.
I mean, I stopped taking a paycheck for a while.
It was really, really tough.
So but then by 2012, 2013, things
started rebounding really, really snapped back hard.
And now I'm making money like crazy.

(01:05:42):
And 2017 rolls around.
And like I said, I'm playing golf three times a week.
I'm going to Florida.
I'm going all over the place.
And I'm getting calls and direct mail stuff
from business brokers left and right.
You know, all the bullshit.
Oh, we got buyers for your business.

(01:06:02):
You know, whatever.
Most of it's garbage.
OK?
And I have no intention to selling.
OK?
So I get a call one day from a broker, a business broker.
And he had a friendly voice.
And I was getting ready to tell him, get lost, you know,
whatever.
And I said, you don't have any idea what it's like being

(01:06:24):
in this market.
OK?
Where are you calling from?
And he goes, Tentaflying New Jersey.
Oh, wow.
So I said, Tentaflying.
Oh, OK.
So you're right around the corner.
So I graduated from Tentaflying High School.
So he said, yeah, you know, I'd like to come by and talk to you
about your business.
So I said, well, since you're in Tentaflying,
you could come by to my place in Westwood.

(01:06:46):
And he came by and he was with a company called SF&P, OK?
A guy named Fred Silverman, who lines up businesses
for private equity companies to buy.
OK?
Really sharp, he's a really powerful guy.
OK?
I had no intention of selling at the time.

(01:07:08):
OK?
Like I said, I'm making money like crazy
and I'm hardly doing any work.
So they came in and made an offer you couldn't refuse.
That's basically what it amounts to.
They did a deep dive into the business before they did that.
And then they came up with this number that was like,

(01:07:30):
I brought it home to my wife.
I said, can you believe this?
You know, when is something like this
going to come around again?
Right.
Because this is the second wave of consolidation
that I've been through.
The first wave was in the early 90s,
when service experts, ARS, American Residential Services,

(01:07:52):
Blue Dot, and a bunch of others were buying local companies.
And what time period was this?
This was the early 90s.
Early 90s.
Right.
And they were buying up a lot of companies,
but they were buying it up with stock.
They weren't paying cash.
They were giving you stock in their companies
because they were all looking to go public.

(01:08:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK?
The whole thing fell apart.
People lost their businesses.
They lost money.
They had Wallace Workless stock.
And I was approached many times.
And they were making me offers that I'm thinking,
if I stayed in business for another two or three years,
I'd make that amount of money anyway.
So who needs them?
Right.
So I was a young guy at the time.
So I passed that up.
But now this time came around, and I'm going, let me see.

(01:08:36):
That was the early 90s.
This is 2017.
That's like 20-some-odd years.
Am I going to be alive the next time this thing comes around?
OK.
So maybe I should take advantage of this.
So bottom line is I ended up selling my company
to Horizon Services, which is the owner of Gold Metal.

(01:08:59):
They own like 20 different brands, Gold Metal, one of them.
OK.
And then I end up on a five-year non-compete.
You know, I had to work for the company for a year
and a five-year non-compete.
And Gold Metal, during that five years, changed.
OK.
They were private equity companies,

(01:09:21):
generally, own these businesses for four or five years,
build up the value, and then sell it to the next guy.
Yeah.
Next guy comes in, cuts all the wherever they can.
They drive money to the bottom line, and then they sell it.
OK.
So they just keep making money and making money.
But in doing that, in doing that,

(01:09:42):
they sometimes, the private equity companies that come in,
they cheapen the service.
They cut corners.
It's not the same company that it was.
It was a great company to work for.
Now it's a bad company to work for.
Their philosophies change, or whatever.
So in that five-year period, I had an opportunity
to go into the consulting business.

(01:10:02):
So I went into the consulting business working with,
I had written into my contract because it's a non-compete.
They don't want you competing against them.
But I had written it in that I would be,
my consulting business would be allowed.
And I would work out of the area with other plumbing,
HVAC, service companies.
Right.
OK.
That's smart.
And so what I did was I was going around

(01:10:23):
and looking at other people's books
and telling them what they're doing wrong,
showing them what they need to do in order
to get this stuff straightened out,
get their businesses straightened out.
A lot of them were companies in that predicament
I was in with building contractors.
They realized they can't make money.
They want to get into the service business.

(01:10:44):
Yeah.
How can I get into the service business?
What do I have to do?
So I would tell them.
Some of them listened.
Most of them didn't.
OK.
But then they blamed me.
Yeah.
OK.
I was going to say.
I'm the problem.
Yeah.
You know, what am I paying this guy $250 an hour for
to come over here and tell me what to do?
And now I'm just out the money and I'm not doing it,

(01:11:05):
but I'm not getting any better at anything.
OK.
So I was enjoying it.
You know, having a good time.
And I was learning a lot because now I'm valuing these businesses.
Oh, yeah.
I'm putting a valuation on it.
They want to know what's my business worth.
So I'm looking at the numbers.
I'm working out multiples because now I've got an insight.

(01:11:26):
I learned a lot just dealing with Horizon Corporation
on negotiating my sale.
OK.
I made a lot of mistakes.
I learned from those mistakes and I was passing that on to them.
OK.
And I still, now that's how when I want to buy another company.
OK.

(01:11:47):
I know how to value them.
OK.
I know what they're really worth.
What you've got to pay.
Like Mr. Wonderful.
And how to make the money.
Shark Tank.
Yeah.
Almost.
Not as nearly as handsome.
And not nearly as charismatic.
But it was a great experience.
And then I put that to work when I went out and bought this total comfort.

(01:12:10):
I had looked at probably, I'd say 10 or 12 other businesses
before I bought this one.
As a matter of fact, I was very close on another business.
But there was a glitch with a lawsuit
that the business couldn't be sold while the lawsuit was ongoing.
I had already made a commitment to buy it.
But the lawsuit changed everything.

(01:12:32):
So I passed on that and I ended up buying this business a total comfort.
This business was established in 1965.
Wow.
In Franklin Lakes.
And I was dealing with the original owner.
Really?
You.
Roy Booth.
He was a smart man.

(01:12:52):
He knew how to run a business.
It was a small business.
There was eight people involved.
But he was thinking that it was time for him to retire.
You think?
He was 90 something.
OK.
He was coming to work every day.
Good for him.
It was him and his son-in-law.
So I come marching in there to buy the business with my son-in-law.

(01:13:14):
So it was there.
Right away.
There was a bond.
Yeah.
OK.
And it was a good thing.
I gave him a bunch of money for his business.
It was worth it.
And he was progressive enough to know that he had some maintenance agreements.
OK.
But he also had a lot, a lot of good customers.

(01:13:35):
Old customers in the Franklin Lakes, Wycoff, Mawa, Allendale area.
Very well.
Very nice community.
Good incomes.
OK.
Not a low end.
What are you looking for when you go to buy a business?
What stands out?
Their numbers, right?
What's the bottom line?

(01:13:55):
What are they making?
What's the net?
What's the net, the EBITDA?
Earnings before income taxes and amortization.
OK.
That's just the EBITDA.
It's just a fancy word for the net at the bottom line.
OK.
OK.
Because you can only offer people a multiple of that number.
OK.
And we know right now that private equity companies are probably paying in the two to

(01:14:18):
six multiple range, OK, based on a variety of things that make your business valuable
or not.
Do they have maintenance agreements?
You know, what are the people like?
What are the, you know, what are the assets like?
What's the culture like?
OK.
Is the business growing?
Is it dying?

(01:14:39):
You know, people have different motivations to sell.
You know, man, this thing is getting to be too much for me to handle.
Right.
OK.
Whatever.
So there's like 10 items that I look at.
And I put a grade for each of those items.
And it's a number grade based on the multiple.
Like I use numbers between one and five, because I'm never going to pay more than five times

(01:15:02):
earnings for any business right now.
OK.
Any small business.
OK.
So if you have big guys that are dealing, you know, that are doing 10, 15, 20 million
a year, the multiples go higher for them.
OK.
Private equity companies are not looking at anybody who's making less, who's gross is
less than six million a year.
They're not looking at you.

(01:15:23):
Got you.
If you're doing a million a year, they're not looking at you.
All right.
So we're safe.
OK.
So we're waiting for you.
I don't know if it's safe.
I think we're out of the equation.
You got a target to shoot for.
Yeah.
So the those are that's what I look for in a business that is making money.

(01:15:45):
I like to look at the businesses that are are so busy that they're not doing the right
thing for the customer.
OK.
That's where you're consulting.
Yeah.
That's where your consulting comes into.
Yeah.
Like your consulting wing.
They run in.
They're stamping out fires and getting out.
Yeah.
Overlooking a lot of stuff.
I'm telling you that'll kill that.

(01:16:06):
That was a hard lesson for me to learn.
Yeah.
I thought plumbing was you get in you fix the problem you get out.
Right.
It's not that you want to get in there.
Give the customer great service and not see them for a long time.
Or if you have a maintenance agreement or service agreement you see them on their maintenance
is right.
And when you go in you're looking for other stuff and you say OK here's it.
Here's where another problem is coming up.

(01:16:28):
I heard this guy on YouTube say he goes if you're not working to sell your company all
you have is a really risky job.
Yeah.
You have to have an exit strategy.
Yeah.
I mean the first thing you do when you go in business is figure out what your exit strategy
is going to be.
And then that's a target that you could shoot for.
OK.
Because everybody's going to exit at some point.

(01:16:49):
Right.
OK.
And some sooner than others.
OK.
So that person is very smart person to tell you that.
So you know you get the company where a guy's got three technicians and he says Bob
here here's five tickets get these jobs done.
OK.
Larry here's six tickets you get these jobs done because you're fast.

(01:17:13):
OK.
Mo you're a little slow.
Here's four tickets.
You do those.
OK.
And just get them done.
OK.
And these guys get in and get out get in and get out.
Horrible.
Meanwhile you know what they're working on a boiler no heat.
They're standing next to a 15 year old water heater.
Yeah.
But they don't even look at it.

(01:17:33):
They don't even look at it.
They replace the thermal couple.
OK.
On a 45 year old H.C. 125 with leaking at the the circulator elbow.
And all they're saying is I got to get I got five more tickets.
I got to get the hell out of here.
Got to get this done.
Man let me get out of there.
Yeah.
The boss doesn't want me spending any time here.
Yeah.
OK.

(01:17:54):
You don't make money driving from call to call.
Nope.
OK.
You make money when you're in somebody's house and you're not it's really bad customer
service to overlook stuff like that.
OK.
What are you going to do walk away from that 15 year old heater and then three weeks they
going to call you at the thing flooded the basement.
By the way why didn't you tell me about that when you were here last time.

(01:18:15):
OK.
You know how I'm going to how I'm going to you know we had to get out we were in a hurry.
OK.
We got into.
Oh sorry go ahead.
No.
I mean to cut you off.
It's that's the style that you don't want to.
Yeah.
OK.
I look for businesses with that kind of style because that means there's a lot of low hanging
fruit.

(01:18:35):
OK.
Those customers are going to call that company back and you won't you now own that company.
OK.
And you're going to go in and do the right thing.
OK.
You're going to see.
Oh wow.
Wow.
This boiler is ancient.
I mean what do you do.
You're going to do an expansion package on this thing and put $1800 into this thing for
new expansion valve relief valve feed valve expansion tank the whole circulate.

(01:18:59):
Later you know the whole thing.
Why would you do that.
You know it doesn't even have any of the modern safety doesn't have a roll out switch doesn't
have a spill switch doesn't have a low order cut off.
Get this thing out of here.
Yeah.
OK.
It's time to change.
Yeah.
You know it's the what should you do moment.
You know what do you think is the right thing to do here.
OK.
Yeah that's what we we've jumped in on that to you know four or five years ago and Paul

(01:19:21):
used to sit on the seminars but he was a one man guy for a long time.
You get to the point where you just like let me just make my money today and get back and
I'm going to just think about this but now you know I'm running a lot of the office stuff
Max is in the field.
There's now time to sit down and how are we going to get into the customer give him the

(01:19:41):
best service and not see them for a long time and they have a great warranty.
So we go in and you're familiar with it but I'm just going to repeat it for you know the
viewers.
Sure.
We go in.
Somebody calls us for a hose bib.
I go in I look at that hose bib.
That's your basic option to fix that hose bib.
Right.
But I say when before we get to the job Nancy says listen the plumber is going to come in

(01:20:05):
he's going to look at your problem but he's also going to point out other things that
are connected to that problem and he's going to give you options on repairs and warranties
and stuff like that.
So we've been trying to start we've been trying to go that direction for a long time.
But I would love to get my text because we're going to be hiring somebody soon I'd love

(01:20:28):
to get my text in instead of because you know plumbing the new guy who's coming and he knows
plumbing.
Let's learn how to do sales how to close the sale how to open the sale how to speak to
the customer words not to say you know it's almost like the contracting industry is because
it's no longer how good of a contractor you are it's how good I don't want to ward this

(01:20:55):
the wrong way because you obviously need to be a good contractor but it's how you get
in there and you sell the job where are your talents like the industry your talents have
to expand to just being a good plumber you have to be able to banter with the customer
they have to like you they have to be you have to be clean you have to know your stuff

(01:21:15):
and you have to have eyes on everything so you can lay down an option sheet and say listen
you want to not see me and sit for a long time and save a lot of money this is what
needs to be taken care of.
Yeah you pick this option I'll give you a great warranty we're a phone call away we're
going to take great care of you you're really just selling yourself at that point.

(01:21:36):
This stuff needs to be done and if I take care of it now it's going to be a lot less
expensive than if I have to come back each time and start taking care of each item individually
the more I do the more you save.
Yeah.
Okay and by the way whenever I run a call like this I always offer free home safety
inspection to see if there's any problems that I can take care of while I'm still here.

(01:21:56):
That's it you're getting their foot in the door.
Yeah stuff rolls off.
Yeah.
I mean that's a Charlie Greer line okay Charlie Greer tech daddy baby okay he's evolved or
died yeah okay he's he was a tech trainer he still is.
He's right about that evolve or die oh yeah or you'll just fizzle out.
Sure.
You know it's not it's it's not easy to make that transition there weren't a big transition

(01:22:21):
in the industry I feel.
There's a big age gap you know yeah was it like 20 years ago the average age of a plumber
was like 42 or 43 now it's like 61.
Oh yeah it's like the average age of our group it's like 59 yeah we're going to help we're
going to try to help turn that around.
He'll lower the average a little bit yeah he puts you in that group.
I'm alright with that I know I'm getting old my beard is graying out all that stuff.

(01:22:46):
But it's the truth and what you'll have to do is you're going to have to look at your
numbers it all it all revolves around billable hours.
The concept of billable hours is so important and most guys can't wrap their head around
it okay that the gold standard for billable hours is like 50 percent that means for every

(01:23:10):
eight hours you're working you're going to bill for exactly okay the rest of the time
is going to be spent doing estimates returning materials stocking your truck doing paperwork
writing estimates going out looking at jobs whatever okay and if you're going to have
two people now in the field okay you're going to have maybe like 1800 billable hours okay

(01:23:35):
because you got a 2000 hour year right 1080 you know you probably understand this already.
So if you know but I want these I want people if you're going to get 50 percent billable
hour efficiency but a 2080 hour year 80 hours is gone on vacation right away okay and then
you got six paid holidays and what about sick days or whatever so you got another 10 days

(01:23:58):
gone okay so you really have like 1900 and 90 whatever it is 1900 billable hours excuse
me so if you just be conservative and use a thousand hours a year because it makes the
math really simple yeah okay and if you've got you know these numbers don't make any

(01:24:20):
sense but the math will make sense if you got a hundred thousand dollars in costs and
you have a thousand hours a year to capture that that means that your billable your break
even selling price is a hundred dollars an hour yeah okay but in reality you probably
got 400,000 okay in costs and you got a thousand so now you're out your actual break even is

(01:24:46):
around 400 an hour yeah okay and seriously I don't care what how efficient you are in
this business if you're doing service and repair work not new construction if you're doing
service and repair work and you're charging less than 350 dollars an hour you got a crummy
job you're dead in the water you got a crummy job man you made yourself you bought yourself

(01:25:07):
a crummy job yeah okay because you're rushing all over the place you're not making the money
that you could make coming to work for courts or coming to work for all serve well excuse
me total comfort you could make way more money working for us and doing that on your own
and have half a lot no liability because right you got the liability okay they screw some

(01:25:30):
up it's on you okay and no and the responsibility is half okay I tell we talk about this all
the time you know it was when I first got into I always worked for somebody I was building
high-end swimming pools before this I was their plumber I wasn't selling jobs I wasn't
in the books this was all new to me so when I came in it was hard for me to sit here and

(01:25:54):
charge Mrs. Smith who's walking on a walker you know try it it was tough for me you like
oh I can't charge her this meanwhile she's sitting on a stack of cash in the back you
know this old like opening up you know the financial investors yes now I know that we

(01:26:15):
we come in and I try to tell you this all the time what's this plumbers we come in work
we're killing our body for your house yeah we come in with a fully stock truck with gas
insurance I got a lady who answers the phones that I have to pay yeah okay we have to go
back and forth we have to make sure that the plumbing we put in is going to last for the
next 60 years you know so I now have gotten to a point where it's not difficult for me

(01:26:42):
to charge what I know I'm worth but it took a while it took years of learning and and
understanding the arguments and realizing how bad my knees have gotten in the last six
years and how much my back hurts like you know what I mean well you have the confidence
now because you understand and when you comes time to explaining it to a customer they can

(01:27:03):
they can feel that confidence yeah okay they know this guy confidence this guy knows what
he's talking about okay and they they're less likely to put up resistance yeah everything
is too expensive no matter what the price is it's too expensive so you just automatically
assume that you're going to read read meet some resistance just like that okay but you

(01:27:25):
know what we're there to make things safe make you comfortable okay and like you said
when I'm done you won't see me for a while you won't have to see me for a while okay
but there's soft skills that you have to develop you know how to communicate all right and
we're not hard we're not high pressure people okay you want to do it's up to you the choice

(01:27:49):
is up to you this is what I recommend do you think ease of communication to the customer
can be taught or do you kind of have to have that well I think it could be taught you know
what I tell my people is that I don't care what your personality is you could have a
bit you could have a hard time communicating talking to girls in a bar or whatever it is

(01:28:10):
the situation is these days okay but when you come to work for me it's showtime yeah
okay you could be whoever you want you know like Robert De Niro was really an idiot okay
really an asshole in real life but on the screen he's just dynamic guy and you know
you could be that dynamic guy in your own truck okay just nobody knows what you really

(01:28:36):
like right okay it be anything you want you know you want to be the godfather okay shown
up to acting class when you go home you'll be your person well whoever you normally are
and that's it okay so I learned that from a guy a marketing guy out in California he
did a couple of big seminars for next star next star is this huge best practice this

(01:29:00):
organization that I helped start but he said it's showtime man you know you you get to
be whoever you want when you get into the customer's house they don't know what your
personality is yeah they don't know you're a stick in the mud okay you're now you're
Mr. Dynamo yeah okay just act like it you know when you're done you leave you become

(01:29:22):
whoever you are it took a lot for me to get into that it took a lot listening to my uncle
how he spoke and I picked up that over the years and I saw he makes a great point there
I'm gonna retain that I'm gonna retain that you know so I guess you're right again there
there is a certain dynamic that some people have and some people don't but I do think

(01:29:44):
that the important stuff to have a good technician can generally be taught to anyone if they're
willing yeah willingness is the biggest thing it's the biggest thing absolutely right and
you know it's a two-way street to you know if they want to maximize their career in this
industry they need to put a little of their own time into it you know look watch a couple
of you tubes in home selling you know personal advancement you know communication skills

(01:30:11):
you know because in our guys can make a lot of money based on how productive they are
mm-hmm okay that's a whole different thing compensating technicians how to do it and
how to do it right okay we've been through a variety of different schemes I don't mean
schemes in a bad way I mean different plans yeah on how to compensate employees I think

(01:30:34):
we got it right now but by putting in some of their own effort into it they can really
ratchet up the pay absolutely okay so it really comes down to what you want to put into it
you are worth your pay is worth Casey said this actually he goes you are worth what you
make from the skills that you acquire or something like that right if you can put in boilers

(01:30:59):
by yourself you're worth this much if you can sell this on a job at this profit at this
profit margin you're worth this you know it takes work on the business owner to sit back
and evaluate guys like that and a lot of guys they don't want to really do that they was
going to get out and here's your five work orders here's your six go do it but I like

(01:31:20):
to say that we are in a period where there's a blue collar revolution that's what I say
all the time there is there is a blue collar revolution right now where and we talked about
on the first half where guys are especially in this industry especially since covid realize
that we make the world go round you know so yeah this is why advice from you guys like

(01:31:47):
you know who have seen it who have been there who have sold businesses who have done consulting
this is very valuable to me I could talk about this stuff all day long oh sure and is I mean
I can shorten the learning curve for anybody yeah okay that's valuable yeah a lot of people
don't want to hear it who am I who are you when you telling me you know like they already

(01:32:11):
have all the oh they have it all they know it all cried is a killer so yeah so you know
what would they say be careful about giving advice because wise people don't need it and
fools won't hear you want it yeah okay yeah and there are a lot of fools around that's
true and a lot of plumbers in there are a lot less fools around in our industry they're
raging out yeah okay no disrespect guys sorry well you know what it is the age gap in the

(01:32:39):
last 25 years look where plumbing advertising and marketing and branding has social media
has changed the face of everything oh yeah there is no more yellow pages now you have
to worry about being current on Instagram and making sure that you're running ads on
Facebook and that you're you know it's it's an insane change to this industry because

(01:33:06):
when I was 10 years old 11 my grandfather used to take us out and I remember what it
was like I remember there's stupid ad in the yellow pages right and now I mean Max doesn't
have social media but he what the ads we put on social media and we're we're making sure
that I'm following the the insights on the ads and who's watching this and who's clicking

(01:33:28):
and what interests are there it is this is why I say the construction industry no longer
is just for good contractors there's so many aspects you can get into and make money from
yeah you know true and I mean I'm behind the curve on the on the whole social media thing

(01:33:49):
okay I tend to do a lot of my marketing in traditional avenues direct mail direct mail
coupons does that work does that work out direct mail is like it's an automatic you
know you you get a 1% return you're gonna get between a 1 and 5% return on whatever

(01:34:09):
you do with direct mail it's like you know it's just numbers it's a numbers game send
out 10,000 pieces okay get 100 leads close 50% so you has 50 jobs you got okay it's actually
pretty much the same with social media advertising probably the numbers are pretty close actually
I haven't taken the time to learn the whole social media thing and it seems like it's

(01:34:33):
a moving target oh yeah you know this every time I turn around is something else pops
up yeah okay and now AI yeah or bringing AI into this stuff is it's I'm just I'm just
switching we're doing a new website and I'm just switching digital companies SEO companies
okay because the company I had used I used in the past for waterworks but I've gone

(01:35:00):
beyond them now okay so now they're gonna handle the social media stuff because this
is just not enough hours in the day to do all this stuff okay yeah so and you know I
gotta delegate that out that's it you know okay my job in my business is hiring marketing

(01:35:22):
and finances that's it that's all I do I don't answer phones I don't answer technical questions
I don't do any of that stuff listen you said it off air that delegating is very important
and a lot of guys don't know how to do it that's you have to do that to grow yeah you
have to do that there's certain things that you know plateaus that max and I were discussing

(01:35:42):
you know you get to one million to go from one million to a two to three million dollar
company to go to three to five million dollar company five to seven million okay yeah these
are plateaus that right you know require different skill sets as you go along but one thing that's
constant throughout the whole thing is you got to delegate because what what's happening
is you're hiring more people and that is layers of management going on as well as technicians

(01:36:08):
yeah okay so you have to pick good people and and and groom them and give them let them
let the line out okay and you gotta let the line out they'll they'll sink or swim yeah
okay that's good advice if you don't you're gonna be doing it and there's a limit the
limit to what one guy can do is run three to five people in the field beyond that it

(01:36:34):
gets out of control the guys but wants to kill themselves yeah you just set yourself up for
failure there's just not enough time in the day to do all the tasks that you have to do
to keep those five guys going and manage all the back office and back stuff that has to
be done yeah okay so that's the that's the ceiling beyond that you have to hire people

(01:36:58):
I believe you have to hire people before that but that that's the last resort when you're
hitting the ceiling you're not going any higher right so what's what's plans for the future
with the current company you know well we're growing we're probably by the time I bail
out of this thing we should be like three times the size we are now yeah yeah what's

(01:37:19):
your what's your ETA on that five years or less okay I got another five years in this
thing I'm gonna be 74 tomorrow are you really yeah oh happy happy early birthday oh sorry
no it pops here happy stupid birthday 74 huh yeah wow you look great for your age I'm not
gonna make it that far I'll tell you that much oh you will be popping teeth out all left and

(01:37:44):
right and these are real teeth you know I went to the dentist I go listen before you even
start I was like how about just pull them all out and give me fake teeth because I'm tired
of this every every other year it's I want implants you know just put them all in place
those are insanely expensive oh very I told him you gotta go to Turkey they give you a

(01:38:05):
new mouth for $7,000 yeah but you gotta go to Turkey yeah you got to change you get a
weird different clothes you gotta look different well you got the beard ready so you're okay
yeah but you gotta shave the mustache though that's what they're just to fit in be careful
over there yeah I know you know it's crazy over there on that side of the world we have
you know you'll have the best teeth in the in the funeral home seriously for seven grand

(01:38:31):
goodness so yeah I've got plans I mean you know I'm looking to grow this thing and my
son-in-law and my daughter can take it over and they could do whatever they want it's
going to be a situation where they'll have choices they might be able to depending on
what they want to do maybe 10 15 years from now they'll say okay look at let's just sell

(01:38:57):
this thing off to a private equity company okay we'll get $40 million here is 20 for
you 20 for me and I'll be already dead and buried and they'll have a good life yeah I
mean that's generational wealth yeah okay that's that's life change yeah okay it is okay and
they could it could be done it could be done when are you gonna when you're gonna just

(01:39:20):
pack it in just relax you know what I really enjoy what I do when I go to work I have fun
you know I'm not working I'm having fun you have yeah okay it's cutting into my golf this
new get this new gig okay but another year so it won't be you know the every other day
or three days a week playing golf and I'm setting it up to run it does run itself now

(01:39:44):
but even more so okay I could look at numbers anywhere you know on my phone you know in
a house down in Florida whatever yeah okay God willing I live that long okay so I have
no plus I you know what I really enjoy doing is giving back that's why I do this advisory
board down at Bergen Tech that's why I do this president of the Pascac Valley Association

(01:40:09):
what do we need that headache for right right right but I'm setting up things and then I'm
talking to contractors all the time trying to advise them as to what to do it gives me
a little bit of an insight also on some of the guys that maybe want to get out you know
I'll offer them something for their business that that's something that they might not have
had if I wasn't there okay because some of these businesses listen you know what they

(01:40:35):
bought themselves a good job and they had this good job for like 40 years or 30 years
whatever and now that's one or two man shop what are you going to do right it's very little
value okay in that business you know and some of them like if you're one guy like this guy
next door what's he doing what's his exit strategy have a garage sale and move to Tennessee

(01:40:58):
yeah that's his exit strategy all right move to Alabama wherever the cheapest state is
to live in I don't know what it is yeah okay I don't knock Alabama Alabama is really cool
hey please I got family in Alabama okay I'm actually so I got my email no trust me we
bust our chops from here all the time put any place down I'm just saying it's lower

(01:41:22):
the lower cost this is a very expensive place to live Bergen County is one of the most expensive
okay country yeah and I'll tell you my exit strategy does not involve settling in Bergen
County okay no effing way yeah you know I Tennessee I would love to work with Tennessee
well I got to tell you that during that five years five years in exile okay I was looking

(01:41:47):
at a lot of businesses in South Carolina Georgia North Carolina I went down there my son and
law and I went down we were going combing through businesses through financials and whatever
and through some twist of fate where one of my daughters refused to leave Bergen County

(01:42:09):
which meant the other daughter wouldn't leave which meant my wife wouldn't leave which meant
that the whole thing fell apart yeah okay I was willing to buy a business down there
and set move everybody down there the whole my whole family both daughters husbands kids
everything that's what the sale from to gold metal would have provided me I could do that
with no problem okay move everybody all right but they didn't want to do it so that's why

(01:42:33):
I ended up buying this company up here well nowhere else in the world is home to people
who have grown up I mean I have no problem meeting at several different places this this
is home yeah as much as I hate to admit it and as much as I rag on it as much as you
rag on it sure North Jersey it gets in your blood and it doesn't let you go yeah and

(01:42:57):
you know what's impossible to do is move any place with us no ocean yes okay I mean I imagine
my and lots Kansas you know where's the shore I know my cousin when he cut my cousin visited
Kansas and he's from Eastern Ohio no disrespect Kansas no not at all I don't even we may have
used Kansas he goes he's from Eastern Ohio rural Eastern Ohio he goes down to Kansas

(01:43:22):
he goes what the heck is this it's like there wasn't a hill anyway oh yeah it's like get
a freaking hill they made a movie about it Kansas how flat and empty and Baron it's called
I think it's called Kansas the Wizard of Oz no my was talking about my grandmother keeps
talking about how I should watch that movie she goes you will love that movie because

(01:43:45):
it just shows you because I always tell her I want to move someplace else when we're someplace
so I'm not Kansas now she just goes Kansas is flat and my cousin goes he says there's
this breed of spider that lives down there too it's like not for me yeah it's these massive
he had to stay in his cousin's basement and he said these big spiders they just sit there

(01:44:06):
on the wall and watch you all night long no it's like Australia you got anything else
to add before we sign off here any advice to guys coming up or young guys coming out
of high school guys in their businesses yeah don't be afraid to learn don't be afraid
to admit that you don't know it all okay it's very cool to know lots about plumbing but

(01:44:30):
it's not even half the business that's the easy half yeah or the easy 40 percent the
other 60 percent is the business side which is you know I could say is just as important
or you could say is more important than the plumbing skills I mean you could be the greatest
technician in the world and you could go belly up and broke and yeah hate your life yeah

(01:44:54):
okay so don't be afraid to admit that you don't know everything and there's so many
avenues to find this information out now that do networking okay whether you network with
other businesses that are outside your industry or inside your industry you will learn though

(01:45:16):
why don't you for the audience here plug your business okay total total comfort plumbing
heating and cooling right yeah total comfort plumbing heating and cooling we're gonna
find you online soon to be electric oh you're out taking an electric to yeah I mean electric
I'm the electric go hand in hand yeah the electrification of our industry I know this

(01:45:38):
is a whole other topic that we could spend another yeah 45 minutes on but I mean natural
gas and hydrocarbons are going away okay it's just a matter of time I probably won't see
it okay but I'm seeing the beginning of it yeah okay everything's heat pump this heat
pump that so I don't know I forgot the question was the question you plug in your business

(01:46:02):
you're taking an electrical how can I get that plug my business so yeah we've been doing
this a while and you know I'm gonna plug my business but I'm also gonna plug my my
consulting side if you need help you know you contact the boys here at courts they'll
get your money up they'll get you hooked up with me and I'll help anybody out you know

(01:46:25):
he will I'm telling you Mike you said something and when you were at the when you you're involving
the association and stuff it's giving back yeah and there's a lot of guys who have been
in the industry as long as you have a lot of buys may not come up to you and say it
but it's definitely means a lot and it gives it it gives dudes coming up who really don't

(01:46:49):
have much experience somewhere to look just like a base to say oh you know what I can
call this guy and I don't know sure you know that's insanely important I wish I had guys
that I could call when I was when I was coming up okay I paid for it you know I got on an
airplane and I flew somewhere and paid for it to go learn you know here it is it's free

(01:47:09):
right right in front of you okay what's where can we get you online total comfort total
comfort that biz okay that we ran out of dot com so now I'm that big B.I.Z. okay what's
the phone number 201 891 1333 all right okay for consulting we'll get you hooked up with

(01:47:29):
Mike over here great guy to talk to Mike thanks so much for coming out this was a play a lot
of valuable information you guys are gonna get some really good reels out of this episode
folks again thanks for joining us thanks for following Plumb Bums again if you want to
be on the show you're gonna go to courts plumbing dot com you're gonna click the podcast link
follow the instructions down on be a guest and fill out that application will get you

(01:47:51):
on any small business owner any cool industry any entrepreneur will get you on have a great
conversation again this show is brought to you by jigsaw pmr jigsaw pmr dot com mold
remediation fire remediation sewer water he does it all high tech stuff he'll get in there
and clean out your house perfectly he'll deal with the insurance company a one service from

(01:48:12):
jigsaw and guys don't forget to like share subscribe please if you're seeing an episode
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(01:48:33):
with no it was just very informative I can listen to him talk all day yeah guys thanks
for watching and we will catch you here next week

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