Collaborating with the Competition | Podcast Ep. 137 | Toolbox for the Trades

Matt Lamartina, you are the president and GM of Tony Lamartina Plumbing Company, incorporated in St. Louis, Missouri. I am so happy to have you today on Toolbox for the trades. Welcome.

Thanks, Jackie. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm a longtime listener. First time caller, I guess.

Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for listening. And hopefully this is not your. That, not your last time. I try really hard not to repeat guests because I want to showcase. There's so many great contractors to showcase, but I do love having people revisit, so maybe that'll your future one day.

I would be honored.

So I'm going to start off this conversation with a bit of an icebreaker. I would love to know, where would you time travel if it were possible? Oh, man.

Where would I time travel? I. I would. I would probably be 1992. Maybe 1992, maybe. Maybe the summer of 92. That was the summer that I remember working with my dad in the plumbing truck, trying to earn enough money to. To buy a bike. And I remember waking up early with him getting in the truck, driving to different jobs, and all of the smells of a plumbing truck kind of come back to me whenever I think about those memories. And I think if I was to go back to. To the summer of 90, 92, 93, I would have probably taken notes, asked more questions, and really learned a lot of what he was doing at the time and why he was doing it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's actually very insightful and a very smart answer. I'm thinking, like, I'm going back to the 70s. I want to see where the Ramones at CPGB's. Like, I want to go see, like, Nirvana. Like, I'm gonna. I'm thinking concerts. You're thinking, this is why you're a GM and president and I'm just a podcast host.

Thank you. Yeah, my. My dad, actually, he. He passed away recently. He passed away in January. He battled frontal temporal dementia for a few years, which is the same diagnosis that Bruce Willis has. For people who think of dementia sometimes think of what Bruce Willis was going through, and that's what my dad had. So that was a little bit of a struggle. And so as I kind of think back, got to have that opportunity to have those long, hot days with him working in a plumbing truck. I think that would be something that I would gladly go back to if I could.

Yeah. Oh, well, that's much sweeter than I thought it was. Thank you for sharing and I'm sorry about your dad.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Jackie.

So speaking of your dad, this is your dad's company that you're running. You got into the trades in a pretty unconventional way. You know, you grew up in it like a lot of folks do, but you did not originally come in to own it. So tell me the story of how you became the president of the company.

Yeah, so my dad always said that this company is going to die with him. He didn't want me to get into it. I was on a different career path. I actually, you know, he, he worked really hard and he was able to, to, to give me and my siblings the opportunity to go to, you know, great secondary schools here in St. Louis and go to college and to get that four year degree, I took a different path and I went into pharmaceutical sales. My dad's brother was in pharmaceuticals for a long time and he built a great career in pharmaceutical sales. And so when I was in pharma, I was looking at, you know, advancing up the ladder, going from sales rep into working in the home office. Office. And a lot of times most pharmaceutical companies are in, on the east coast in New Jersey. So the idea was that I'm going to, you know, go back to school and get an mba and that will position me really well for a great position at the, at the home office in New Jersey. And so I went back to school and worked during the day as a drug rep. And when I was in program, one of the classes that I took was called strategic consulting. And in that class, the capstone project was to write a 10 year strategic plan for a company. The professor had written a book about strategy and had a long career in strategy and had his own consulting company that specialized in strategy. And he said to the students, whoever gets the highest grade in this paper, on this paper is going to get my services. I will help them launch this plan. So my dad and I went through the mechanics of the book and we ended up writing this strategy paper and turns out it got the highest grade in the class. And when that happened, the professor, you know, true to his word, helped my dad and I launch this plan. And this was back in 20, 2013. Now I'm sorry, let me go back a little farther because I went to graduate school 2008 and then in 2011 is when I end up graduating. And so that's when, that's when the professor helped us launch this plan was like winter of 2011. So it was really exciting. It was just my dad at the time and two plumbers he was looking to wind down, didn't really want to go any longer in the business, wanted to, you know, sell it and kind of ride off into the sunset. And so I sort of talked him into something different. And that's kind of how we got to where we are today.

Dang. And at the time, the company you said was netting about 600k a year, right?

Yeah. So it was right around 600,000 a year. And now we are on track to do about 3 million.

Wow. So you were. Your dad was winding down. What the heck did you say to him to convince him to not wind down, but to wind up?

Well, I think one of the aspects of the paper was the analysis that we did on with our existing customer base. And it really showed that our customers had certain needs that we were able to meet in the market. They really wanted a plumbing service that was prompt. They wanted a service that was responsive and professional, and we had really high marks. And that led my dad and I to really have that conversation about, you know, what if we were to scale this up? I mean, how big can we get? And he had a lot of fears with that. You know, he was. He was really scared of, you know, what he called growing yourself broke. And so that was something that we had to kind of work through. And, you know, there were certainly some years where we struggled with that, but ultimately, we worked our way through it. And, you know, we are on a great path right now. It's really exciting.

Yeah. I really want to talk about this idea, this fear your dad had of growing yourself broke. Remember when I told you I like to go on tangents in these conversations?

Yes.

This is kind of one of those tangents that you organically find that I think is really interesting, because I think there's a lot of contractors out. And for the record, a lot of contractors who don't want to grow, who want to be at a, like, chill at a certain level, and they're happy there, and I think that's fantastic. But what would you say to folks right now who had similar fears that your dad had about this fear of growing yourself broke?

My dad started the plumbing company in. In a way that most contractors do, which is we. We start as an apprentice, we earn our journeyman license, and we. We earn our master license, and then we're at a point where we can go into business and hang that shingle and start our own company. They're not trained on how to run a business. And so that's a little different than when I went through business school to kind of have those tools and understand a little bit More about financial statements and accounting and strategy and marketing. It gives you a little bit more confidence to go, go a little farther down that path. And that's where I think contractors can get really nervous about that because they know plumbing really, really well. Like, I know how to rebuild that toilet, I know how to replace that stack, but I really don't want to have the responsibility necessarily of bringing on multiple employees and then being responsible for marketing this and having the phones ring and getting people keeping them busy all the time. So my advice would be to find someone that can help you run the business. Find an organization that can give you the playbook to, to execute on. Even, even with my mba, there are things that I'm learning constantly about running a contracting business. We just recently joined nexstar and they have amazing tools and amazing playbooks that allow us to just execute in ways that, frankly, I wasn't capable or knew how to do when I first came on board, my dad, back in 2011, 2012, 2013. So to be able to go in an organization like nexstar to hear what they're talking about really helps alleviate that fear of growing yourself broke. Because they're able to come and say, look, we've got thousands of members that have made mistakes and have been successful and worked through it, and here's the best practices, here's the coaching, here are the processes, here's the training that we can provide you. And all you have to do is get out of your own way. If you can just execute on this, you're going to be successful. And that's been really, really exciting for us to do because it gives us the opportunity to open up new career paths. Like, it's not just hiring people and helping them achieve your goals. It's now what's the career path? You're not, you're not just a journeyman plumber. Now. You have the career path of becoming a field service supervisor or a field install supervisor or an underground supervisor. Now you are coming out of the field and you're able to help us train that younger generation of apprentices who are so excited to come on board and get a job in the skilled trades and earn a great living. So I think I would urge contractors that have that fear to really reach out and, and, you know, be vulnerable. Admit that, you know, this is something that, that I am scared of. But there are people out there that can help you with that and, and I would definitely urge them to reach out to organizations like, like nextar.

What wonderful advice and what a great way to put that. I'm actually, like, envisioning in my mind a bunch of contractors, like, stalking outside of MBA schools and just like, hey, hey, hey. You doing a project like, can I. Can I be your. Can I be your thesis? Which actually wouldn't work because schools are online now. But. But I think that's really sage advice, you know, you know the technical aspect of it. Partner with folks who can help you execute on the business operations side. And I really love that, how you share that even though you have your mba, you're constantly learning. You're constantly learning about new ways to do things.

And really, one of the. And I mean, this is something that. That, you know, I probably should have mentioned earlier, but it was listening to podcasts like Toolbox for the Trade that allowed me to understand that, oh, my God, I'm not the only one having this problem. Like, there are other contractors that have struggled with this and have made. That's my goal to change. And so, like, that was a really a big awakening for me is to find that podcast and start listening to it and then finding all of these other pathways to get information. So, you know, I've had conversations with other software providers that compete with Service Titan, and, you know, I love Service Titan. There's no question about it. The kind of data that you get in Service Titan, I wish we would have gotten on it years ago. I remember in 2014, when Ara had stalked me on Facebook and had reached out to me and was like, hey, we've got this software. It's called Service Titan. I was like, I think we're okay right now. I'm not quite ready to make that leap. And now, you know, eight years later, here we are on Service Titan, and I'm wishing and kicking myself I didn't get on board back in 2014. But the podcast that Service Titan sponsors, Toolbox for the Trades, is awesome. Absolutely awesome for learning.

Thank you. That is really my goal with this show. And it really warms my heart that you got such a. She got such good insight from the podcast. And then you also said it opened up the door to you, to other podcasts that were in the trades, talking about, like, more. Because we talk, I think, a lot on the show about vulnerabilities, about growth challenges, how people overcame that. We talk a lot in generalities. But you also said that you found other podcasts through my channel.

Absolutely, I found totally, totally. I mean, Tommy Mello, A1 garage door John Wilson owned and operated, like, all of these people that have been guests on your show. I've now listened to their podcast and it's just like all this great information is out there for free.

It's so cool. It's so cool. And it's a great way to network, too, honestly. Like, podcasting, I think, is the like. Anyway, I'm not gonna. This podcast is not about podcasting. It's about your journey. Matt lamartina. And I'm getting back on it. I would love to know. So, like, you did this, and we're gonna talk about getting more people into the trades as well. Cause I know that's something you're really passionate about. But you spoke about how in your project, you know, you analyzed your dad's company and you saw that there was a lot of strengths in the customer experience side. You had a lot of, you know, doing that analysis. It sounds like really opened yours and your dad's eyes to what the company had. You know, I feel like sometimes we're so focused on what we don't do right, that it's easy to overlook what we do do right. And I know that really prioritizing your customer experience has helped you skyrocket the company's growth. So can you tell me a little bit more about that?

That was one of the things that came out of the analysis was that customers really wanted to communicate with plumbing companies specifically, but in general, I think residential service contractors, outside of just having to make a phone call. And so when we were looking at this, I mean, it's silly to say it now, but back in 2011 in St. Louis, at least, there weren't a lot of plumbing companies that had a website. There weren't a lot of plumbing companies that had a branded email address. You know, my dad at the time was using like, an earthlink address, and that's how he would kind of communicate with customers. But there wasn't that branding that was there. And when we launched our first website, you know, we had like a. A Contact Us schedule service page on it, which was, you know, enter your information, what your plumbing problem is, and we'll. We'll get back to you and schedule service. And it was really well received. I mean, people would be going onto this thing and so many responses at 10:30, 11:00', clock, 12:00 clock at night or early in the morning, or like during their lunch hour. And how awesome is that to be able to connect with customers just in that way, but also then via email and then also on Twitter and then Facebook. And so we really did made ourselves as accessible as we possibly could. So that was One piece of it, you know, the other piece of it really came when we started using, you know, software, you know, when we first started with a different program, but being able to send text alerts to customers when we're on the way. And that was a great. That was just a great thing that not a lot of companies were doing. And then we moved to service titan. Now we're able to send a photo of the plumber and they're able to see where the plumber is in relation to their house and how far away they are. It's almost like that Uber feature that customers just love. So it's been a really great way, you know, for us being residential service and repair plumbers. We know what our. What we need to do and that is make the customer experience the best experience possible for them. It has to be easy to schedule, easy to communicate with us, easy to leave us a review. It has to make them feel safe that they know that this is a licensed contractor coming to their house. This is what they look like. Here's a little bit of information about them. All of that is an incredible way that sets us apart from a lot of contractors and really adds value in ways that we couldn't do without. Products like servicetitan.

Yeah, I thank you for saying that. You mentioned in 2011, it's hard to believe, but contractors didn't have a website. But I still think it's important to emphasize this customer experience because even though now we're in 2023, there's still a lot of contractors that don't give that service. I had a plumber come to my house over Memorial Day weekend. On paper, I was shock, shocked. It was offensive to me, but it was just like it was emergency plumber. I had to have it done. I was not thinking clearly and I didn't have all of my service titan plumber friends, like, on my phone, like, send a tech your way. I wasn't going to bother them. It's holiday weekend. But like, it's true. Giving that that experience is so valuable and can really set yourself apart from the competition.

Right? 100%.

And it's important to remind yourself that this is so important too. I don't know about you, but I'm someone who. I'll learn a lesson once. And then sometimes I need to have it reinforced a few times before it really sticks, especially when it comes to doing things differently than the way you used to do it.

I mean, I think that was, that was really important for us. And a lot of it is reinforced through the reviews that we get. You know, I'm thinking of just recently, within the past few days, reading those Google reviews and having customers say things like, I really loved having upfront pricing. I really loved that they presented me with options or they went through and they looked at everything. And, you know, again, these are things that, you know, we're learning how to do better through the systems that we're putting in place. You know, Service Titan's been incredible for us to be able to put together a world class price book that allows us to roll out upfront pricing in ways that we never could have done as well as we are right now. But also being able to present customers with multiple options for a repair and give them that control to spend however much money they want to spend to fix this problem.

Yeah, I think that's awesome. And by the way, guys, I'm not paying him to say all this nice stuff about service just organically coming out. So I want to make sure we talk about the passion you have for getting people involved in the trades. And you listen to the show. You know, this is stuff that comes up all the dang time. People are like, how do I get the right techs? How do I build my own text? When I first spoke with you, I learned that you're actually very active in your local community in one, recruiting people into the trades and changing legislation to make it easier to get people into apprenticeship programs. So let's talk about the partnership you have right now with Rankin first. Tell me a little bit about that.

So Ranken is a technical College here in St. Louis that's been around for a long time. Almost all of the plumbers that we have on staff have graduated from Ranken. And Ranken offers a plumbing theory program. It's about a nine month program. It's not inexpensive. I mean, you're talking about probably anywhere from 15 to $20,000 for those nine months. But you come out with over 500 classroom hours and you come out with OSHA and a really solid basis in plumbing theory. And so those are the kind of apprentices that we love to hire. Because in St. Louis, in order for you to become a journeyman plumber, you have to do five years of on the job training and then you can sit for a journeyman plumbing exam. In order to sit for that exam, not only do you have to have those five years of experience, but you also have to have the OSHA certification and the 500 classroom hours. Only if you have those three things can you take the journeyman plumber exam. Which is a very difficult exam to pass. Once you have that journeyman exam and you've passed that now you're a licensed journeyman and you're able to, to make great wages. Up until then, you know, they are first year through fifth year apprentices and every year we are scaling them up and we're being really competitive with, with our wages. We have to compete with the union and really do our best to stay in line with that because that's really where a lot of the plumbers are in St. Louis. We're a non union shop, but we really pace with those benefits. We do the best we can to pace with those benefits as a small company. So Rankin allows us to really get eyes on some great young talent that are interested in building a career in the skilled trades. Back in 2015, you know, my dad really wasn't that excited about bringing on an apprentice. The thought was they're expensive, you gotta train them. They're gonna be sitting with a journeyman for a long time. It's just like a sunk cost. And so the idea was, is we're just gonna go out there and hire journeyman plumbers. And this was in 2015, it was really difficult to find good quality journeyman plumbers that have residential service and repair plumbing skills. You can find guys that do commercial, but residential is a totally different animal. Commercial plumbers, they're used to working on large job sites, walking, not interacting with the homeowner. They don't have to interact with the homeowner. They can be muddy and dirty and knock their toolboxes into walls and it's not a big deal because it's not a finished space. But when you're in residential, you're going into very nice homes with a homeowner that's going to be watching your every move and you're using tools that you're not going to be using on like a commercial job site. So it was really difficult to find the right plumbers for this. We started partnering with Rankin in 2015, 2016, to develop content to help educate incoming students as to how lucrative a job in the skilled trades really is. When I say job, I really should say career. It's a career in the skilled trades. There were great articles that came out, you know, in Forbes that talked about the purchasing power parity of plumbers compared to physicians. And what is often overlooked is that while on paper A physician makes 150,000 plus dollars a year, they have a lot of debt. There's a lot of debt behind that. There's Undergraduate school, there's graduate school, there's medical school, there's residency, there's fellowships. All of that is years and years of debt that you're accumulating. When you become a plumbing apprentice, you're going to take on 15, $20,000 of debt with education, and you're going to come out making 20 bucks an hour, and it's going to only go up from there. My fourth year apprentice is making $80,000 a year, and I love bringing him into Rankin and having him speak to those students that are sitting in class and to say, here's what we do at Tony lamartina Plumbing Company. Here's the kind of work we do. And this is what I made last year. And I'm 22 years old. I own a house, I've got a great pickup truck, I've got an Xbox. I've got my gaming systems at home. And these kids are like, oh, my God. And. And they want to get into the trades. And so when we did this back in 2015 or 2016, Rankin was graduating about nine to 12 plumbing students a year. Now they're graduating 65 to 70.

Dang.

So you've got all these apprentices coming out into the market. The problem now is that in St. Louis, we have a ratio where we can only hire one apprentice for every journeyman plumber that we have.

When he told me this, when Matt told me this, sorry to interrupt you, my jaw hit the floor. I was like, are you kidding me? Sorry. Continue, please.

Right. It's, it's. It's a real struggle for businesses to grow because now we've got kids that are coming out of school, and we'll have a career day here at the office. We'll have 25 kids come to the office to talk with our plumbers. And I can only hire one kid, maybe two, because I don't have the journeyman. And so now we look at this problem, and I think every contractor that's listening to this is going to probably, maybe feel some of this pain. But the average age of a plumber in 2018 was 59. 59 in 2018. Then we went through Covid, and we all know what happened during COVID You had, like, the mass resignation. So now you have a lot of these older plumbers that are journeyman plumbers that are now retiring and they're leaving the field. And now we have a lot of young, talented, mechanically inclined kids that want to get into the skilled trades but can't get a license because contractors like me who are begging to Hire people. Literally can't hire them. I have customers that have to wait two weeks to fix a running toilet or replace a garbage disposal that's leaking or a water heater. What ultimately ends up happening, Jackie, in a situation like this is good. Qualified contractors aren't able to service these great customers that have a need, that want to do the right thing and get a licensed professional to replace their water heater. And instead of waiting, they're going to go to a chuck in a truck, an unlicensed handyman that's going to happily put in a water heater that may or may not be to code. It may or may not have all the tightened gas joints on it. It may not be properly calibrated for pressure, and the homeowner is going to end up having problems with that. It's not going to be a permitted installation. You're not going to have it inspected by a plumbing inspector and work starts to go underground. And that's what we're afraid of in St. Louis. And so we have, you know, one of the companies in St. Louis that we have, have really partnered with to change this problem and work towards change is Hoffman Brothers. So Hoffman Brothers is like the 800 pound gorillas St. Louis.

I mean, they've got, they're a big competitor of yours, right?

Huge, huge competitor. Right. Plumbing H vac electrical appliance. Chris Hoffman and I had lunch back in, in February and we both were like, this issue with St. Louis is crazy. Like in any other industry, if I had so much customer demand, I just want to hire more people and to meet the customer demand. That's what we have here. We have so much customer demand that I don't have the people tired. I have people to hire. I can't hire them. So Chris has been absolutely great to work with. We were able to get a meeting with the mayor of St. Louis, Dr. Sam Page, and sit down with Dr. Page, along with Senator Doug Beck, he's a state senator here in Missouri, and the Plumbing Board of Examiners to really tell this story about our concern as qualified plumbing contractors that want to do the right thing but can't because of these arbitrary restrictions of one to one. And so we are doing everything we can to try to get this ratio changed. I would love it to be four to one, you know, four apprentices for every one juryman. You know, we are strictly focused on residential service and repair. So doing jobs like replacing a water heater, a garbage disposal, a toilet, a faucet, a sump pump, those are all tasks that we can easily train these apprentices to do that they learn in school, but that we can reinforce. How to, how do we do it the Tony lamartina Plumbing Company way? How can we, you know, partner with Hoffman Brothers, who is working really hard to launch what's called Hoffman Brothers University that will allow mechanically inclined kids to go right into a program that will develop their skills and get them in a truck and get them access to well paid, well paying, recession proof jobs. That's what these are. These are recession proof jobs that pay $80,000 a year. And we are more than happy to bring them on and pay those wages because we've got plenty of customer demand.

I just, I just, I'm so happy I got you to talk about this. And I know I'm keeping you a little later than I promised, but I think what's so brilliant about what you said, okay, like, not only did you take on your dad's plumbing business when that was never in the cards for you, right. You challenged your dad and he, you were able to work out something where he supported you in that you quickly recognized a problem that you couldn't solve. So you went to local school to work with them to solve that problem. You, you essentially solved the problem. They're graduating, you said, 65 to 70 people a class here. All contractors listening.

Apprentices, right?

Excuse me, all contractors listening. Did you do you hear? And you did that content partnership with them in 2016, you said, or 2017, something like that. So that's what, six year turnaround? Yeah. Okay. And that was a blog post. Very pretty, pretty simple. And doing some visits and some in person, you know, school stuff. Then you found out there was a legislation block where, oh crap, I can only hire one apprentice for every one journeyman. And now you're partnering with, you know, one of the biggest guerrillas in your market to work with your local legislation to adjust that. And I just want to give you a super round of applause, kudos. Because I think that is just fantastic and I think it highlights why it's so important to. This has come up on the show before network with. With competitors. Right. But also, like, look at how the local, the local, your government systems and processes are working and figure out if there's a way for you to adjust it. Like there's a way to be. I totally understand and I don't want to bemoan anyone who complains about the, about the hiring issues. I mean, I complain about the hiring issues myself, be doing this podcast, but I think there's so much to be said about taking action. So I really want to applaud you for that. And I hope that today's interview inspires some people to like, oh, I wonder what the legislation in my area is like. Oh, I wonder if there's a technical school nearby that I can partner with, because I think that's how this is going to get done on the grassroots level. So I love that you're doing this.

Thanks, Jack. You know, it's. It's. It's great. I love talking about it because it is something that, you know, back when I was in high school, there weren't any trade schools that were coming to my high school back in 1996, saying, hey, there's another opportunity here to. To, you know, if you're mechanically inclined, here's a great career path for you. And I think we're really late to the game, and I think we're really behind the eight ball because those older German plumbers, they're retired. The young blood is there, and they want to work and they want to have these great career paths. And we have them. I have them. I'm more than happy to bring them on and hire them and to train them so that they're able to do awesome plumbing for our customers. Just please let me hire them.

Oh, my God. I can't believe you're in this. Catch 22. It's so bizarre to me. I don't want to take up more of your time, but, Matt, please keep me posted with how this goes on. I am so fascinated. And if you and Chris from Hoffman Brothers are able to make a change, I hope you know that I want you back on the show to talk about it. So best of luck. I am rooting for you. I really hope that gets resolved soon, and I hope you keep us posted. But thank you so much for coming on to Toolbox for the Trades. This was such a delight for me, so thank you.

Thanks, Jackie. I'm really glad that it worked out. I'm really excited. Thanks again.