60 | High Fives and High Growth: How Levi Torres Transformed a Small Plumbing Business into an Industry Leader

Thank you for coming and hanging out on Freedom Blueprint podcast. And today we're hanging out with Levi Torres from High Five Plumbing and, but we'll get to that in a minute. Levi and I have been friends for a lot of years and we were just talking before we hit record. I can't believe it's taken this long to get him on the show, but here we are. We're doing this thing and I'm excited for you to come hang out. So thank you, man.

Yeah, Justin, like you said, it's about time we connected and got together to talk on this. You know, we've talked about a lot of conversations, a lot of different things, and so it just only seemed right for us to get on the podcast and do it together,

Well, there's always such good, I feel like there's a lot of times that you and I'll have conversations and we're either in the truck or driving somewhere or whatever. And we get towards in the conversation and go, man, that should have been recorded. Like that was really good information. So here we are, now we're getting to record it. So let's do this. For anybody who doesn't know you, tell us a little bit about how you even got started in the trades.

huh.

Right?

Yeah, definitely. like a lot of people write the typical story, my dad was a plumber. So when I was 16, I got an apprenticeship card as a birthday present. I was ready to be a plumber. That's what I was going to be, right? And so worked with my dad for a lot of years, graduated high school and didn't want to go the plumbing route. So I went to college, went to a semester of college and got the bill from that semester. And I kind of looked at that bill and said,

Wait a minute, I called some local plumbing companies and said, what are you paying your guys right now? And they're like, hey, at the time it was like 21 bucks an hour or something. And I'm like, sweet, quit school the next day, went back to plumbing. And so I worked with my dad and his local family owned plumbing company in Southern Colorado until I was about 24, 25 years old. And you know, it just a small town plumbing, right? So we did all, everything and anything, right? That we could do plumbing.

to stay busy. so really, that's how I really learned, right? I learned from my dad, I spent most of my time with my dad. But, you know, being in a small town, I naturally kind of outgrew my environment, right? I wanted a little bit more, I wanted to expand, I wanted to experience some new things. So moved out of my small hometown and moved up to Denver. And that's the first time I was really ever introduced to like service plumbing, you know, customer service base, you know,

where you can actually get paid on performance. So that was a really good introduction. And so I worked up here in Denver for one of the biggest companies in the state for about two and a half years and was one of their top producing plumbers. And yeah, once again, kind of the same thing. I wanted to grow a little bit more and they weren't quite getting me what I felt I could get. And so quit there and started Hi -Fi plumbing.

And so really my whole life, I've really only spent about four weeks employed outside of the plumbing industry in my life.

Very cool. when did you guys start, when did you and Cassie start high five plumbing?

First four years in business, we did nothing but new construction or remodel.

That's interesting that you came up with such a cool name and you were such an out of the box thinker and then you went right back in the box and you're like, new construction. Which I mean, whatever, like sometimes you do things outside of your comfort zone. Sometimes you do things in your comfort zone. But I will say this, one of the things that's so impressive that you guys have done is you guys have taken a simple concept of a high five and you've made it an entire brand.

Yep.

And I think that's so cool that you guys really focused the brand and the high five. And if no one's ever checked it out, go search them on social media, go check them out their website. mean, there's all kinds, mean, you can buy their merch from their website. I've got quite a few, I got hats and shirts and it's great. It's really cool. it's something so much out of the, like it's really out of the box for the space that we're in.

Well, and I think sometimes people miss the point. I think probably more so people that aren't in the industry than are in the industry. But I think a lot of times people look at it they're like, well, plumbing is plumbing. No, plumbing is not plumbing. And the person doing the plumbing is not the same plumber from the new construction to the commercial to the residential service. And I think that that's something you guys identified pretty quickly and went, okay, so we got to make some shifts here in order to be able to.

tremendously and we'll get into that in a minute, but at what point throughout this journey do you feel like you guys really started to get ahead of steam where you were starting to grow? Like you were seeing that growth.

And so that's when we really started to say, no, this is how high five is going to be. This is how we're going to operate. once we did that, man, was like recruiting got easier, marketing got easier. And things started to work a little smoother because we started to build our identity at that point.

Well, and you think about it from, you're a technician and you're like, all right, well, I'm gonna go work somewhere different. I can go work for Joe's Plumbing or I can go to this really cool place, High Five Plumbing, where get a baseball jersey and I get a sweet hat and I get a baseball card, business card. Like, who's not gonna make that decision? And quite frankly, what's genius about the whole thing.

is that the person that wouldn't want to come there and wear the jersey and do all the things, they're not even going to apply. So you're getting rid of that stuff right at the beginning. That's so awesome. we're going to fast forward a little bit because I said earlier, high five plumbing and we'll get to the rest in a minute. So let's talk about some growth. you guys have had, I mean really over probably

Right?

the last 36 months, more specifically, probably the last 24 months, crazy explosive growth. And honestly, some of that is at a time where businesses are starting to stall a little bit. You guys are like a headwind knocking it out, which is great. So tell us a little bit about adding some verticals to the business.

Mm -hmm.

and we had just, everything was going real smooth, right? Felt right. And we were given the, an opportunity presented itself where we could get one of the well -known HVAC managers in the area to come in and start our HVAC division. He was able to get a pretty solid following of technicians from around the city that would be willing to come and help us start the division.

And so, you know, I met with him for a couple months and we decided on that April 1st was going to be the day that we rolled out our HVAC division, right? So we started rolling out our HVAC division and it started, the first month was really just April 1st to the end of April was just the manager I hired and a helper essentially, another person to help build it.

and they ran whatever calls organically came in, but we weren't really marketing yet because we wanted to just have all of our systems, all of our processes in place, which is another thing that you guys know that you guys have helped me help kind of create over the years as well as, you you got to have systems to make these things be able to work, right? And so we didn't want to just roll it out crazy because we are such a systematized company that we knew that if we didn't do it strategically, then it would, the plumbers would have this, a certain standard and the HVAC would not have that same standard.

Mm

So that first month, we just built all the standards and operations and how we expected the HVAC to operate. And then May 1st is when we said we had four people come in immediately. So we hired four technicians from day one in our HVAC division. We were already pre -calling all of our club members. So we were already booked out for weeks with inspections. And we just kind of hit the ground running with HVAC.

That's fantastic. Well, and so a couple things from what you said, I wrote some notes and I figure it's worth sharing. So a couple keys, right? So you guys have had crazy amazing growth in plumbing. Now putting on HVAC, you guys have experienced amazing growth in a very short period of time on that as well, which part of that is gonna be the systems and the expectations that you have for your team and that your customer has for your team as well. But so some things I wrote down.

was mission, vision, goals, and memberships. Like how impactful will one, on the vision side, you go to launch this to your team, they're all behind it, because they're like, yeah, it's on the board. It's not even an option. It's getting done. That's pretty cool. And then the other thing is, from a membership standpoint, you were able to grow an entire division

off the ground by leveraging your membership. Now, the reason that's important is in the HVAC, at the time of recording, most of the country is just starting to roll into that shoulder season, right? And for HVAC companies, they're like, well, you know, not a lot of calls. And during the summer, they're like, I don't want to sell memberships because I'm busy and whatever nonsense they got going on. But you were able to grow a division because of your club memberships.

And that is spectacular. Like that is so cool.

Yeah, I mean, was was really cool. And as we were hiring these HVAC people to come in, they were coming from other places around the city, right? They were excited to see that we were finally offering the opportunity for them to come and be a part of what we had created. And they were just so in awe at how our customers loved us, right? They were like, it just seems easy because they're happy that they're coming in and they're high fiving us and

They're even shocked because the customers are high -fiving them now before they were even right because that's the customer base we built because the standards are plumber set, right? So now it kind of raised the bar on our HVAC guys a little bit, right? They're walking into these customers' houses who absolutely love our guys. They can see through our history of our job that there's 10 different high -five pictures with different technicians throughout the years. So it starts to kind of create a standard for these new technicians coming in.

would say probably one of the most difficult things to do in our space is to create raving fans. It's just not easy, right? Because first of all, when a customer calls us, usually it's not like the highlight of their day. They're like, great, I got to call my plumber. But you guys have managed to create a culture, not just in -house, like not just of your team, but a culture of raving fans.

That's so impressive that customers are like, I mean, I just, need a high five today.

It is cool. It's definitely a cool thing. Like I said, know, right when we we built when we chose the name high five, we really didn't know how impactful it was going to be. Right. Like like we knew it was cool. sounded cool and it fun. But we really didn't know how impactful it was going to be until we started to grow our team and see, man, you know, we get thousands every every year we have thousands of high five pictures with customers. Right. So talk about a brag, a brag book for your technicians. Right. When they have

100 pictures of them high -fiving happy customers it makes it pretty easy for a customer to say well dang I guess if they all liked you and wanted to high -five you I guess you're pretty good right and so the name has definitely made it to where a customers It makes it fun. It makes it light -hearted, but it does create a little bit of a standard right because

you don't get high fives if you do a bad job usually, right? And so we did realize that by having the name high five and that every call does end with a high five, you do create a standard that you have to maintain that is kind of not expected if you had just a normal name, right?

So to that point, I feel like I wanna clear the air on this because I feel like if someone's listening and their name is Joe's Plumbing, they're sitting back listening going, man, I should have come up with a better name. And I wanna say this, Levi and Katz, they made this really amazing package and they have leaned into it they've made it very impressive, but the high five is just part of it. If they were Joe's Plumbing,

they would still lean into something, right? And maybe it's not a high five, maybe it's, I don't even know, a dog or a high five dog or I don't even know. I'm not a marketing, you're much smarter at marketing than I am. But you know what I mean? Like, don't let, if you're listening to this and you're hearing this story, don't get too hung up on, well, crap, I have to change my name in order to do that. That's not what it is. Like, do you agree with that statement?

Yeah, no, what I tell people, Because I hear that a lot. People are like, I wish I would have came up with a cooler name. it's not that. You have to have belief that your name is going to stand for something, right? And in whatever that stand is, and that goes back to vision and having a mission, right? So as long as you have a vision and a mission for whatever your name is, then make your name stand for something, right? And so it doesn't matter if it's cool or not, if you have cool colors or if your trucks are wrapped cool.

You have to believe that your name is gonna stand for something or it's gonna be hard to get any kind of movement anyways, right? That's the key is vision and mission is the key to building a brand. doesn't matter the name, it's the vision you have and the mission you set forth for your team is gonna be what builds that.

That's such a great point because people do sometimes spend a lot of money on wrapping their truck and really cool whatever and then they get bad reviews and you're like, well now you just spent the money and you're not getting the RLI on that deal.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, like I said, I'm not saying rebranding is never needed, but it's the fact that if you're trying to rebrand, then make sure that you're rebranding for the right reason and not because you think it's gonna magically change something. It's like, you don't have a good vision and a good mission, then the brand's gonna struggle, right? It doesn't matter the name. Hi -Five would have struggled if me and Cassie didn't have the vision to build it bigger and to make it better for people, right? It would have stayed the same way.

There's not a month where we don't feel like we don't go the right direction.

Yes, so now you guys are in two locations, correct?

Yeah, so we have one main hub, right? So in Denver, we actually have three locations, right? We have an office in Denver, which is the main central part of the city. We have a little, just a little tiny office. We have our warehouse where we house all of our materials is in Littleton, which is the southern half of the city. But our main operation and main hub is in Golden on the west side of the city.

So three locations, that's right. So that's pretty impressive growth. So now we've got three locations. What does the team look like today? So you've got the plumbing, you've got the HVAC. What's the future hold for High Five?

Yes.

Yeah, so naturally, right? So we added HVAC in April and with our natural growth we had with HVAC, we were starting to overwhelm the electrical people that we used. So we hired an in -house electrician to kind of just handle our own work. And then the days that he was slow, we decided that we would go ahead and just take any calls that we would get that were pertaining to electrical. And then that division started to grow.

And so then as of last month, we rolled out our electrical division. We now have four people in that division. And once again, we're leaning on our club members again. We've been doing nothing but electrical inspections. And to be truthful, electrical has been the most underserved trade I've seen. Every one of our members that we've had a conversation with is ecstatic to know that they're now gonna get a high five standard for electrical.

So if you run an electrical company and there's a lot of opportunity out there for you because we rolled that out and that division's outpacing growth probably by HVAC month over month at this point.

Well, and again, what's crazy is yet again, you've now launched another division using club members and it's already got your business to where you needed four people in that new division that just launched. I think it's all so amazing. And really what I hope is for anybody listening, they're listening to this going, okay, so I can do this and it sure is easier.

to sell to customers that already know, and trust you. And not just that, but raving fans.

That, yeah.

Yeah, it's like I said, it's definitely made it to where, you know, they come in and they see that these are these are club members, right? It's not that people aren't buying maintenance programs from us, right? It's not a maintenance agreement. You're joining a club. And one thing that's cool about a club is if you're part of my club, I can call you as much as I want. And so like they've kind of accepted that, like realize that we're to call them monthly. We're going to be sending emails all the time. They're going to get text messages.

and they want to be in the club, right? And so that's what we've realized when you can get that type of a loyal customer. We've found that to roll out the other trades, you can definitely get through some of those growing pains with building your marketing a little bit.

So here's what's interesting is when Levi and I were talking about doing this episode, we were talking a lot about leaning into culture. And we haven't even really gotten too much into the culture side of it. I mean, I guess we did a little bit, but.

You

But so for the sake of time, I wanna be careful about not taking up too much of your time, but I do wanna have you back on, because there's so much more stuff that we could cover and we need to cover. They need to know the story, they need to know the secret sauce behind all this, which I wanna say this, as somebody who's known Levi and Cassie for a lot of years and have worked with you guys, here's a big thing that they do that I think is

Right?

right?

does not look that as high as it should be, you guys are implementers. So when you guys learn something, and I have watched this happen firsthand, when you guys learn something, it's not a put it on the shelf someday maybe, or use the excuse if I got busy, you guys get busy getting to work and implementing. And I think that is such a big part of your success that you've had over the years.

Yeah, no, I would say, you know, it's one of them things where I've always been pretty confident that regardless of the decision I make, I'll be able to get out of it, right? Figure out a solution. So when you have that type of confidence in your decision, you tend to make decisions fairly quickly, right? And that's one thing High Five has always been. Like I said, if we see something that we believe is gonna be a benefit and only make the business better,

We have a culture of change. So it doesn't take me months to roll it out to the team. It takes me a couple of weeks to be able to sit them down and say, hey guys, we like this. We think it's going to be better for us. This is why. And it's just normal because we've never stayed the same. Right. And what I mean by that is, you know, everybody kind of says, man, aren't you scared of people stealing your stuff? No, I'm not. Because most likely we're going to be doing it drastically differently in six months anyways.

And so if it just helped them get to a different stage, then great, right? But last year we had about 90 companies coming to our high five. And this year we've had roughly about the same already. And so like I said, we just want people to be able to get some nuggets to be able to help them potentially get to the level they're hoping, right?

That's fantastic. Levi, thank you so much for coming and hanging out. Any closing thoughts you've got?

or have faith that what they're teaching you is gonna work and you think your way is better, then you're gonna always kind of be in that area where you're gonna struggle a little bit, right? So ask for help. And then when you do ask for help, come with an open mind and don't think that your way is better because there's a reason you're asking for the help.

that was a one. That a good mic drop. Man, that's an awesome way to close it out. Levi, thank you so much for coming and hanging out. gosh, if you need to get in touch with Levi, check out his, well, what's a good way for them to contact you?

Yeah, mean, social media is the best. You can hit up all of our company, our Hi5 social medias, and they will all get the message to me if it hits our social media. Or you could email me. It's simply Levi at Hi5Plumbing .com. It's H -I -G -H, the number 5, Plumbing .com. And like I said, we do tours. We talk to people. We really just want to try to help make the industry better. And we believe that we do have a kind of a unique way of doing it.

Awesome, man. Appreciate it so much,

Awesome, thanks Justin.