Scaling Your Plumbing Business The Right Way with Richard Behney and Tommy Mello

Most tradespeople are great plumbers but not businessmen — without pricing knowledge or systems you just 'own your job' and struggle; the turning point for Richard was getting a business mentor, and admitting you need help is wisdom and strength, not weakness.

Buyers of home-service companies want two things: a recognizable, emotional brand in the market and proven systems (service agreements, financing, a CRM like ServiceTitan) — and the real test of good systems is whether the business runs fine for a month without the owner ever checking in.

Get your ego out of the business: Richard built Attaboy so that nobody even knew who he was and the company didn't need him, which is exactly what made it valuable and sellable rather than a key-man liability.

'Why would anyone want to work for you?' is the real question behind the plumber shortage — there are plenty of good techs; you need a process to attract and retain them instead of blaming the labor market.

Piece rate (a form of commission tied to a price book) is the fairest, simplest pay model — it gives techs control and understanding, gets the owner out of babysitting, and the mistake owners make is constantly tinkering with the percentages and losing their people's trust.

Tommy's KPI-based CSR pay stacks small incentives (on-time, no errors, shift differential, call-quality score, plus $5 for a 90%+ booking rate) so the same call can pay up to ~$9 — rewarding the right behavior lets the cream rise and top performers earn far more than an hourly wage.

Diagnose the person before the problem, then let a simple 25-point safety inspection do the selling — when you show the customer what failed and let them choose, 'you don't have to sell, just excel at serving the customer,' and it sells itself.

The real barrier to breaking seven figures is belief — many owners subconsciously feel they aren't worth a million dollars or that customers don't need the better option, so they build a low-margin 'broke-fix' business that can never become profitable.

Not offering options makes you a 'hack' — it's not the technician's right to decide what a customer can afford; give genuine options (like Tommy's garage-door cycle-life explanation) and let the customer decide what quality of life they want, keeping the old parts to prove your honesty.

Your customers pay for your marketing, so build advertising into your price, and always pay yourself a real salary as a separate line item — the owner's pay is a cost, not profit, and forgetting this wrecks both cash flow and the eventual sale valuation.

Use Facebook and community involvement to build brand and authority (spotlight local businesses, share before/afters and third-party customer praise) rather than posting drain gunk — and prepare now for the commoditization of the trades via Amazon Home Services and Google Guaranteed, because verified reviews and on-time tracking are changing the game.