77 | From Struggles to Success: Jered Williams Plumbing Journey

Welcome to another episode of Freedom Blueprint podcast. I have got a super cool guest today, a friend, a neighbor, which we'll get into in a minute. And he's actually live here in the studio, which if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see hopefully the camera's the camera looks good and the lighting looks good. Jared's to help me a little bit with that because that's not my expertise.

Sure is gonna be fine. It'll be fine.

It'll be fine. It's more. But anyways, it's great to have you. And I wanted to to kind of get the audience to know a little bit more about you and your journey right now for anybody who's like that name sounds familiar. My guess is if they pull up their phone, they're probably seeing a video of you and the wealthy plumber group and the school group that you're currently running, which we will definitely get into that. But before we do.

Man, appreciate you coming and hanging out. All, what are you, two miles, if that?

Thanks for having me here. I appreciate it.

I think it's actually like eight miles, believe it or not, because because I got to drive. It's like a big you your house. If we were to fly would be like maybe a quarter mile.

I don't think we'd have enough time.

I could probably throw a rock from my house to your house. I'll have to get a plane first, but.

Next time you bring your plane over here.

So a little bit of, we'll get into this story. So a little bit funny story. We have a ton of mutual friends and they were like, Hey, you guys need to connect. And I don't know that they even knew this, but in communicating back and forth, we realized that we live right down like really off the same road, basically in the same neighborhood.

Yeah, I think you got in my Facebook group and and I was at the time you know, I've been Realizing the power of just your personal Facebook page how useful it is and so I've been going in and adding friends as people Yeah, join my group and you were one of the people that I added and then you reached out and said hey We got a bunch of mutual friends

Maybe.

I know what it was. So your pressure washing business, you have great videos on the pressure washing business, the pressure washing business is Dude Wash. And I saw some of your videos that are fantastic and hilarious. And I was driving through Pensacola and I saw a billboard. Actually, I think I saw two billboards, but I saw a billboard and I'm like, wait a minute, that like see branding works.

Dude, why?

It does, dude. I'm telling you.

Branding works. So tell us a little bit about your journey. So you were from the plumbing trade. How did that even get started?

Plumbing trade got started because when I was in high school, well, it's kind of a longer story, but I went to ninth grade at a Catholic high school and that was not my forte. And they ended up kicking me out and said, both, both the Catholic and the high school part. And they were like, look, they told my parents, my best friend went to the Catholic high school and they were like, he can't come back. And my parents were like,

The high school or the Catholic part?

What do mean? And they're like, he, he doesn't do his homework. He's always getting in trouble. Like he just, he can't come back. You need to send him to a different school. So my parents were freaking out. They sent me to this school in a bowling alley. Um, and it was, there was like 20 students and there were two girls, 18 boys, two girls. One of the girls is now my wife. And I ended up getting, she got pregnant. Um, long story short, senior year of high school, she actually graduated a year early. I graduated on time.

And we had a kid together and we got married right after high school. Her dad was a, he was a welder out of the plumbers and pipe fitters union. And so out of high school, I needed a job. had to pay for diapers and kids are not cheap. No. And he goes, he goes, well, you know, you can come work at the company I'm working for as a yard bird. So I did that for a year and I had no ambitions in life.

Kids are not cheap.

Like none whatsoever. My plan was to move to Australia, live on the beach for free and work at Subway. I was going to be a sandwich sandwich artist. That was my. Because you get a free sandwich every day. OK. And so I thought there's half my food.

Why Subway though?

Yeah, I don't know if you get a foot long or a six inch or how that works nowadays, but the later on in life, I was working with a guy and he would always tease me. He's like, you missed your calling. And I didn't know it at the time, but subway calls, there are people who work there that call them sandwich artists. And so I tell everybody that was my calling in life. I should have been a sandwich artist.

You could have made tens of dollars doing that.

My best friend ended up doing that. He moved to Australia. Didn't work at Subway, but ended up moving to Australia. Yeah. Anyway, back to how I got into the plumbing trade. I was a yard bird. I learned what all the parts were. I learned that some of the guys there are cool and some of them are total pain in the butt. And I got in the apprenticeship the following year. Went through a five year apprenticeship and then...

Got my license. That's how I ended up in the trades. It was kind of by necessity. Yep.

When I think, think a lot of people that get in the trades, that's kind of how it happened. It was either by accident or you're like, I don't know, I got to do something. And then they ended up.

I mean, it's better than going to college or jail. Yeah. can't tell you how many biologists I've worked with on a job site. They're like, or even, somebody who went and got their masters in business or something like that, or their business degree. Yeah. And here they are on a construction site, being a carpenter or an electrician or a plumber and silly.

Jail.

Well, the the butt crack plumber was always a thing for a very long time, right? Yeah. And that has shifted tremendously.

You know, COVID, I think COVID had a lot to do with that. You know, all these private equity groups started looking at what our business was doing. And then they started kind of sniffing around a little bit in these businesses. They're like, wait a minute. These redneck boys are making some money. These are cool. What they're making some cash. it's, you know, people, there's a lot of, a lot of things that people may go without. Yep.

then you're not gonna go without being able to flush your toilet or be comfortable in your home. mean, you're gonna figure out how to solve that problem. And the truth is less and less people nowadays are mechanically inclined. you think about 10 years from now, will kids even know how to change oil in a car? Probably not, like, because will they even have oil in the car? So who knows? But it's definitely shined a light on what it is as a business and in our industry as well.

I don't know.

Look at the shift that's happened even in the last 10 or 15 years. Like it used to be what used to be you could even find like it was rare to find a hundred million dollar company. Yeah. Like rare. Like I can name five that I knew about. And now.

They're everywhere. They're everywhere. Which is. Yes, it is my favorite part about becoming a plumber and not going to college is I used to work with. So I worked on like big commercial construction projects and when I was the foreman on these projects, I would work with mechanical engineers and I would make way more money than them and it would piss them off and I loved it. Absolutely loved it. You went to college for five years.

It's pretty awesome.

and have 150 grand in debt.

And now you're pushing paperwork. Yep, and I'm over here making more money than you pretty funny. Yeah, I like it

It's good. It's good thing about the trades. So all right. So pipe welder are kind of in the union, learning the trades a little bit. And then you started a, you started a service company while plumbing company. I don't know if you focused on service or not.

I originally started. I originally started a company. saw a guy on eBay, believe it or not. My very first business was making prebuilt like in Alaska. There's a bunch of hydronic heating, so we do boilers, hydronic heating loops, and I would pre make boiler installation packages and ship them out all over the US. That was my first business. Sell them on eBay and they would contact me.

They would fill out a form. I would get all the information, what boiler they're putting in, how many zones they have, and I would build the whole thing and ship it off to him. It was pretty cool. That's how I saved up my first initial bit of money to be able to go buy a van. And I started my first business. It was called a J and J mechanical at a partner, Jason Pesillas, still, still working his nuts off to this day in that business, still running around like a chicken with his head cut off. We ended up, uh,

We were doing, you know, we were from the commercial construction world, didn't know anything about service. And so we thought, that's what we need to go do. And then you get into it and you start working for contractors who don't want to pay you on time and they're super cheap and you know the drill. And so I saw the writing on the wall and I said, this is not the future that I want. We're working more and we're making less. My goal was to work less and make more.

I do know the drill.

And so I said, hey, you know what? You can have the business. So I gave him the business. And then I started up JRod's Plumbing and Heating and went into the service world. And that's when, I mean, it took me a long time to figure it out, but eventually I figured it out.

So when you pumped out and started rocking with some J-Rod action, did you focus then on the residential service?

This solely residential service. And so, and in Alaska, plumbers do heating and plumbing. We don't split them. It's not, it's not like down here in the States. So it was heating and plumbing service. That's all I did.

So then from there, then you ended up changing the name and rebranding.

Yep, I ended up shutting down the business twice because I so when I first went business, I charged $120 an hour. I called around and everybody was like we're 130, we're 135 or 150. So I thought cool, I'm gonna charge 120. I'll take over the market. I'll get all the work. I'll make all the money. And then at the end of the year, I made 60 grand and I was like, man, I make more working for another contractor.

So I did that twice. The third time I went into business, which sounds silly, right? If like, why did I go in business a third time? But the reality was I hated working for people. I'd be on a job site with a bunch of grumpy construction workers doing the same thing day in and day out. And I would tell my apprentice to be like, you know what your job is? It's put up hangers, put pipe and hangers, put pipe together, and then you do it again.

It was just the thought of, you know, I was thinking I was like 34, 35 at the time. And the thought of having to do that for another 30 years was there was no way. Yeah. So I, so I quit again and I started my company again and I thought I'm going to make this work this time. I could see on Facebook, I could go on Facebook and there's shops that have like 30 guys. There's no way they're not making money and they're consistently grown.

I just got to figure out how they're doing this and then go do it. And the cool part is like in Fairbanks, Alaska, nobody was doing it. There were no million dollar shops. Everybody was under. I mean, they're all two, three hundred thousand dollars shop.

So that's because they were charging 130 bucks an hour. Which is interesting. So when you think about that, there's so many, I'm going to say entrepreneurs, but really what I mean is there's frustrated technicians that go to start their own business. And that's exactly what they do. They're like, let me be cheaper than the other person. And the truth is, is, you know,

$130 an hour, yeah.

make it about something else other than the money and people don't mind paying more money.

That's the thing that service exactly. They'd think that in their head they think nobody will pay that. Yep. But the reality is there's people out there just dying to pay that. Yes. If they can get somebody to answer the phone, that's it. Show up, answer the phone, fix their problem right the first time. Pretty much that simple.

and show up.

So, okay, so you got the business going and then at some point from Fairbanks, Alaska, you moved down the road for me in beautiful Pensacola, Florida. But you had, I know now you've sold your business, but at that point you hadn't sold it yet, right? No. You still owned it. Yep. Okay.

Yeah.

I owned it up until about six months ago. Just sold it.

Okay. So you just went, that's it moving.

Yeah. I mean, the, business was at a point where it was producing good revenue. It was producing okay profit margins. my wife was tired of being in Alaska. She's got eczema and dry skin and Alaska is super dry and it's cold and it's miserable. And you know, we'd both lived there our entire lives and we saw an opportunity to get out and we had a really good general manager in place.

And I've heard it's cold.

And we moved. It was super scary. Yeah. Just the day I, you the business was only like two years old. Maybe. Yeah. Two years old. We left. Two, two and a half somewhere in there. I lose track of timelines. Yeah. But we left it was probably one of the best things we ever did in hindsight because it forced me to get out of the business, get my hands off of stuff. I can't interrupt anymore. I can't. Yep.

see something and jump in.

I gonna say, yeah, you can't jump in a truck and go fix it. And I that's, that's a biggie. It forces you to create systems and accountability and yeah.

It really, yeah, forced me to understand, really get a deep understanding of the numbers. then probably the biggest thing was just understanding efficiency and how to drive efficiency in your business. When we figured that out, was like, holy moly, we went from like 18 % profits up to like 30 % net profits. it was, were doing the same amount of people like last year before I sold.

Just focusing on efficiency. We added a million in revenue. Same people. Nothing changed. Just efficiency. That's it. And all that went to the bottom line. It was wild.

Efficiency, feel like is one of those things that most business owners, I don't want to say don't look at, but I think it's a, you it's kind of like you look at revenue and then you look at profitability. And the truth is, is all that information in between those two numbers is what is your calculation to get to the bottom number. And efficiency is typically one of the.

Yeah. I feel like, I feel like efficiency is a big one, but it seems like they go about it in the wrong ways. They want to cut things like service Titan or marketing spend, or they try to get at it by cutting expenses out of their over. Yeah. I can't tell you how many plumbers I've talked to her. Like, I got to cut my marketing spend. I'm like, don't do that. Like, how about you spend it more wisely, but don't cut it. Don't get rid of it altogether. That's not going to help you.

or cut marketing spend.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah, the phone not ringing is not going to help you prosper in your business. you got the business, so you sold the business, which is fantastic. Congratulations.

Thank you. I shouldn't have sold it just now by the way. Yeah, okay, like the thing was a cash cow I should have held on to it. It was well, it was a killer business

But good for you and as someone who has bought and sold many businesses, I do know about you is if you decided you wanted to do it again, you would get to, you would go zero to whatever that number you wanted way faster than you did the first time with way less frustration. That's just how that works. Because you've got the ingredients and you've got the recipe, which is why I think it's really cool with your school group is,

you're trying to share that information with people and giving them the tools that they need in order to grow and be able to scale their business. really, grow may not be the right word. Everybody doesn't want a humongous, giant business, which is fine, but nobody goes into business to be broke.

Yeah, that's totally cool.

No, but I mean, whether you're just if it's just you in your business or if it's 100 guys, you should still be profitable. Yes, and it's all the same stuff. Yep, it doesn't matter if you got three guys or 100 guys. I mean, it changes a little bit, but.

100.

You got to make money. That's why you're there. And the amount of money you can make the amount of money of one truck Chuck can make if he's priced properly and running this jobs properly, man, he can make a ton of money. can a three guy shop can make a ton of money. six guy shop can make a ton of money. It's crazy. And they're easy to run. If you stick to service.

Yeah, stick to service and focus on, I would say culture. Like I think that's, I know a lot of, a lot of groups are buying up businesses and exiting the owners. And, you know, I, I, I did that with one of my businesses I sold and I exited and, culture was like one of the, one of the most important things in that business. I knew it. I said it to them. They didn't care. and they,

within about, I don't know, 45 days, I feel like 80 % of that team left the business. Well, yeah, the culture completely changed.

because of culture. So when you say culture, because this is probably one area that I didn't get to dive into as much as I want to. When you say culture, you know, there's the idea that culture is like, I got snacks in the fridge and free donuts on Fridays and it's a nice place to work. Everybody's friendly and all that. With my business, what I experienced in Alaska is

we had to get rid of the culture of entitlement. We had to go to a culture of performance. When you say culture is important, like what aspect do you mean in that?

I think culture is, know, first of all, everybody's got to know the why. Yeah. Like why does your business exist? What is it there to do? Because there can be different cultures and different visions for business, right? So sometimes it can be all about money. And then sometimes it can be more about having fun.

Yeah.

One of the things we did in what we call 1.0 versus 2.0 in our plumbing business is when Chris Gist and I was my business partner in that what we wanted to do, we kind of sat down and went through our non-negotiables. If we do this again, how are we going to do it? And one of the big things was we want to have more fun. We didn't have a lot of fun in the first time because I was very rigid in how I ran that business. I wanted everything done a certain way. I was not a super flexible guy.

I mean, I am a flexible guy, but you know, it was like, you know, there's just certain things you got to do. If you can't do it, you can, you know, pack it up and roll out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Promote to go work for the competition. So there you go. To me, I think it's it's about whatever mission and vision you have for your business and for Paradise for us, it was growth. We wanted to grow fast. Yeah, we wanted to take over the market. Yeah. And we wanted to have fun doing it.

promote to customer.

I like that. And that's that's how we did everything. That was even the brand. Like if you look at the brand, the Hawaiian shirts, the wrapped Tiki vans rolling down the road, like that's why we did is we wanted to have fun. Yep. And it's interesting because as you say that, when we were as you asked that question, when we first started every monthly meeting, it was it was me talking about how we how we grew beyond what we did the month for like every month, every month, every month.

I was super excited about it and super pumped about it. And finally, my partner's like, they don't care. Like the team is not interested in the growth. That's not what they're interested in having fun. And they're interested in enjoying where they work and being able to feel like they're helping customers. Yes, growing is an organic part of what happens there, but that's really what they wanted. And so when I say culture, that's just somewhere you want to be that you can align with, which is why I think, you know, things like mission and vision.

Yeah.

are so important to all businesses because otherwise you don't know if you're running in the same direction.

Yeah, it's a good point.

It, I mean, it is about money, right? Like if you're, if your business didn't make any money, you can't do anything. So you got to make money, but then that can't be the only driving factor. If it is, then you end up with a culture. Like you said it, entitlement or doing customers wrong or selling customers things that they don't need. Like that's kind of the, by-product of what I feel like is not a good culture. Other people might think that's a good culture. If money and

Right.

profitability and driving is the...

Yeah, PE firms probably like that culture,

Some, mean, listen, for me, when we sold this business to our partner with Leap Partners, that's not their MO, that's not their mission, that's not their vision, which is why it's such a good partnership between us and them, is because people are the most important factor, like I actually have the mission statement, I mean the core value is hanging on my wall back here in the studio. But you know, that was a big part of it, is that even for us,

we still have to roll in the same direction with them. So we have to make sure we're all in aligned.

That's probably something I need to do better at and dig into more with my new business culture.

Cultures. There's a, there's a really good book out there about it, but I know for us, it started out with as silly as it sounds, breaking bread. Like that was a big, that was a biggie for us is just that breaking bread, like giving that time to sit down, have a meal with each other. What's going on. Also for, I know a lot of you guys listen to the show on a regular basis. I talk a lot about one-to-ones. That was another really big thing that we did even at 1.0.

that helped us in culture was doing one-to-ones and finding out what's going on, like what you got going on. Cause if someone's got a personal issue going on, they're not going to give you a hundred percent. They can't. So a little backstory. I remember way back in the day, I actually used to own a restaurant here in Pensacola and I can, and I was, I was probably 21. And so a 21 year old owning a bar.

No, no they're not.

Really good idea. Solid plan, solid plan. But, I can remember telling employees to hang their problems up at the door when they walk in. Like, I remember saying that. And then now thinking about that going, what in the, a kid, trying to, trying to be an adult, trying to be a business leader. And I was not, but that's just not even a thing. So, you know, Hey, if you got to, you got something you need to deal with, go deal with it.

Yeah.

now.

Let's not, uh, yeah, anyway I can. And that includes time off. Yeah. Cause you're not paying somebody to be there 50 % of the time. Like I need, like, I need like 90 % of you here, not 20 % of you here. So.

Yeah, let me help you deal with it.

Yep, yep, I hear you.

But so let's shift a little bit into the wealthy plumbers program that you have. think it's such a cool program. There's really good.

tools that you have in there. I'll let you talk about it.

Yeah, I really it's designed for, you know, guys who are still working to, you know, and want to start their own business to, you know, guys who are, I show you everything that I did in my business from zero to 6 million in revenue. And so, and I'll try to lay it out as simple and easy as possible. and you get in for 99 bucks a month. And so we've

And so we have a super cool community in there of 600 and some plumbing business owners. Yeah. All trying to be successful, all helping each other out, which is super rad and people at, you know, all sorts of various levels that can give you all sorts of perspective and people are connecting in different areas, you know, finding like-minded people, you know, at in their city, which is cool. And then it's also caught attention of, you know, some of the

you know, bigger names in the industry. So we get, you know, Ellen Roars come on and talk to our, in our group. And we had Dan Antonelli on the other day and, you know, getting Brian Burton with waste no day, your wife is going to come talk. Yep. So we get a ton of different perspectives and knowledge and insight. And it's, it's, it's pretty cool. Like for 99 bucks to be involved in something like that, I would have died for it. Yeah. six years ago, if I could have paid $99.

got all the information and then just the encouragement that you get. Because what I tell like when Ellen Rohr comes on or when people come on, my favorite thing is when they come on and they just tell their story. Because most of these guys, they're starting out and they kind of talked about this before the show, but they lack the mindset of knowing, they don't even know it's possible. And when they hear somebody else's story, it's typically always the same. I started, I was broke, I was a plumber or.

something

happened and something happened right and I took a little bit of risk and It changed my life forever and to hear that from person at the person at the person. It's the same story every single time It's inspiring and it just keeps you going

I mean, mindset is, in my opinion, one of the most incredible tools because we do all go through that journey. And I think a lot of times what happens is people see people either on the internet or at conferences or speaking, and for some reason they just assume they never struggled. Like, they never had that. They never had the problem. 100%.

They all did they just assume that person's like lives in a different world. Yeah, I used to think that too, but After growing my social media and being able to connect with people people who are on a whole different level than me They're doing way more revenue than me. They're way farther ahead They're just people. Mm-hmm. They're just like me. They're the same kind of people they had the same struggles They've just learned more and done

Right.

Well, and, I think that, that what the community does, is it allows people almost to fast forward. Like if you're struggling with this issue, I mean, the truth is there, if you, if you're struggling with an issue, you've got to solve the problem a couple of ways. You're either going to pay somebody to help you, or you're going to be around somebody who can help you solve the problem, which typically is going to be through some sort of best practice group or community.

in order to help you move through it. Most of the time, we're not just going to fumble around and figure it out. Sometimes you can, most of the time you're not going to. Especially when you're thinking about numbers, right? And you're like, Oh, I need my direct expenses should be at what should that number be? There's probably a good chance that you can go on, we'll call it Facebook and you can type in and you'll get a thousand different answers from a thousand different people. Or you could be part of a community and say,

Guys, can anybody jump on a call and just help me?

Yeah. I always tell everybody I have zero original ideas. I'm just a good copier. Yeah. That's it. That's what all my success has come from. Somebody else did something and it worked for them. I learned about it and I tried it in my business and it worked for me. That's it. Good copy. The problem with, so the problem with guys just starting out, even guys doing, you know, a million or 2 million, they're

Nothing wrong with that.

Right. You got to be at a certain level.

Yeah, everybody's going after the three, four, five, six million dollar guy who wants to get to a 10, 15, 20 million dollar guy. And so nothing's really tailored to these people. And there's a whole, you know, there's a massive underserved market there. And that's kind of the spot we've tried to put ourselves in is, let's help these guys out that don't have a place to go at a price point that they can afford it.

And we've been able to do that just because we've been halfway decent at social media. It's a cool thing to do.

I would say that's an understatement. think you guys have done a fantastic job. I think that the video and the audio and the ads, I think they're great. I do think it's interesting. You and I were talking offline before this, but I think it's interesting. Some of the, I'm to call it hate mail that people put up there. And it's funny because

Thank you.

You know, obviously personally, I know you said there's a lot of times I'm looking at it. I'm like, I mean, I want to, I want to respond. And my wife's like, put that down, stop doing that. But, um, it's interesting because anytime that comes up when they're like, you can't do this and you can't do that. To me, I go back and I think about how many, how many times people let themselves get jammed up over. You can't charge that you charge anything you want. Yeah.

Yeah.

anything. It's your business. You can run it any way you want. Yeah. Hey, if you don't want to charge the correct amount to be profitable and you want to be the kind of business that charges a hunt, I've seen them at 80. Yeah. An hour, 80, a hundred, a hundred and thirty. If you want to be that kind of company, it's your business. You can do it. But don't bitch about the results you're getting.

No, and it comes at an expense to somewhere. It costs you something. Yeah. Yeah. So, and honestly, when you do that, it's costing your customer, it's costing you, your family, and it's costing your employees. Yeah. Tremendously. You're discounting the customer to rip off yourself and your employees. Right. And to me, that's no way to run a business. I get people in my hometown that think I'm the most terrible person on the planet because

we are three times more than everybody else in town. And I've even had some of my parents' friends reach out. And when I explained to them what happens to these other businesses and how they treat their employees, I couldn't ethically do that in my company. And so in order to not do that, we have to charge more. They're like, I get it.

People are like, how do you sleep at night? You're like, I sleep great because I know my employees are taken care of. Their families have benefits. They have PTO. They have 401k. Like they have things that they should have that I provide them as an employer for them to be able to provide for their family. I it's awesome. So let's do this. let's talk about how do they get involved in the community?

Yeah.

So then go to school.com slash wealthy plumber.

Wealthy plumber. So yeah, so jump on there.

Even if they just Google wealthy plumber, it'll come up. Okay.

So yeah, so go on there, check it out. I think you have a trial.

Yep. Seven day free trial. Okay. You can come try it out for seven days. The whole thing is unlocked. Nothing's off limits. So you could go in there for seven days and get free calculators and marketing checklists and watch all the old zoom calls. You'll never get through it in a week, but you can try. Um, and then you can cancel. don't care. Um, like our whole goal is our mission statement for that business is change the world. One plumbing business at a time.

Love that. That's fantastic. One other side note to Jared's going to be hanging out with us at our power profit workshop coming up in May here in beautiful Pensacola. I am too man. And one of the so one of the things Kristen might yell at me for saying this, but I don't know if she's an ass, but one of the things we're doing is we've rented part of the Wahoo Stadium. So our minor league baseball. So we're all going to be watching the game and hanging out. Awesome. We've got this really cool Tiki bus that's taken us.

site.

to and from and out to be a good time. So, so yeah, I appreciate you coming and hanging out and check out wealthy plumber. Just Google it, check out their school account. Really awesome community. Jared, appreciate it.

Hey man, thanks for having me on.