How Companies in the Trades Can Dominate Their Industry | Podcast Ep. 210 | Toolbox for the Trades

Hello contractors and welcome to Toolbox for the Trades. My name is Jackie Aubel and today I am chatting with the owner of Service Plumbing in Ocala, Florida, Chris Dutell. Chris and I spoke about the life changing event that completely transformed how he ran his business. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Chris, do tell. You are the owner of Service Plumbing in Ocala, Florida. Today you and I are going to be talking about unlocking potential and find your niche. Welcome to the Toolbox for the Trades podcast.

Thank you, Jackie. Glad to be here.

I am so excited to chat with you. I had a great time during our pre interview and I more than confident that we're going to have a great time today. I'm going to kick this off the way I love to kick off these conversations with an icebreaker. That is what song, if any, would be the soundtrack of your life?

Simple Man. Leonard Skynyrd.

Quickest answer I think I've ever gotten from anyone. What makes you like simple man so much?

It's my life story. Just a simple, good old boy from.

Florida trying to do good in the world.

That's it.

Awesome. Awesome. So Chris, why don't you tell me how did you get into the trades?

Oh, I'm fourth generation plumber, so my great grandfather, my grandfather, my dad, and now me and my brother.

Did you always expect that you were going to be in the trades?

No. Well, I, I learned how to drive on a job site building houses. I think I was 14, 15 years old was great. I did built two schools in South Florida doing the plumbing and gas. I think I was 18, 19 years old. Kind of got burnt out after that. So I went to college and made it halfway through college and then I ended up taking a trip to Chicago and I traded futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I think four or five years before I moved back to Florida.

And what brought you back to the trades?

Didn't like doing futures trading off of the exchange floor. So it would have been cold calling and taking money from people. It wasn't my thing, just wasn't it. So I went back to what I knew.

Yeah. And so your previous generations in your family, did they always own their own business?

Yes, my dad did anyway. My grandfather, I'm not sure, but my dad did in South Florida.

And it wasn't service plumbing that is your own. That's the one that you started, correct?

Yes.

And so when you got out of the Chicago Merc, did you go straight into running your own business?

No, I went to work for a company in Boynton beach running service. So I took care of the beach from Dade Broward in Palm beach county east of A1A. So I was doing service plumbing for all the retirees and old peoples in the condos and the big houses, you know, Palm Beach, Miami. I was probably there for a few years. I moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Go figure. Florida boy. Yeah. And I worked there for a few years, moved back home to Florida. Well, not home, but Ocala. And I came down to Ocala, Florida. My brother was here, my dad was here, and I was here for three days. My brother got a service call at a place called Chaney Brothers, which is a large food distributor, southeastern United States. I knew the owner, so I went there with him because I called him and he's like, oh, you're ocal? I'm like, yeah. So that turned into a two year plumbing project. That's when I started my business. I was working with my dad and my brother for a little while and then just kind of went out on my own because of Cheney Brothers, which led into the hospital job. So I do a lot of work for HCA hospitals here and in the villages. And I was about two weeks old from being done at Cheney Brothers and a big job at ADA remediation came up for these hospitals. And I spent the night with my dad going over a massive set of blueprints for two hospitals. Went in the next day with a proposal and he said, can you start tomorrow? And I did. And I've been there ever since. That was probably 2007 when that happened, so been there every day ever since. I've got two guys work in hospitals every single day, Saturday and Sunday and most nights.

Wow. Wow. But you do do some standard residential service and replacement. Not just hospital.

It's about half and half now. It's almost 50. 50 exactly. Now, being in the hospital all those years mainly by myself for most of those years. I'd have helpers and stuff, you know, over the years. But it led to the residential work because the hospitals are our largest employer here in town and there's two of them, plus all the outdoctor's offices, surgery centers, imaging centers, senior centers. When you're there every day, you get to know these people, you become friends with them from the janitor all the way up to the CEO. And it just led to going to their houses to do what I offer all their employees a 10% discount, the IP membership. And it just kind of started rolling like that. Now in the last two years is the first time I've Ever done any marketing? Going to try to grow the residential side here. We're about halfway there.

Awesome, awesome. So this kind of goes into you finding your niche, right? So you got this opportunity within these two massive hospitals in your area that employ, I'm assuming, thousands of people.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You're in there every day. They recognize your brand and they're like, if they have an issue at their home, they're like, oh, you know who I should call? I should call maybe Chris and see if he's available. So it sounds like through these commercial jobs, you steadily started growing your residential units.

Exactly. And speaking of niches, working at a hospital like that, I found out about medical gas. And so we do medical gas also, which is oxygen, vacuum waste, anesthetic, gas disposal, nitrous nitrogen, you know, all of that. And I got into that, which was something different, something a lot of plumbers don't do, at least in our area. I think I'm the only licensed one, or my guys, anyway, also in our area to do this work.

This is the first I ever heard of plumbers being able to do this medical gas work. But it makes sense and it is so representative of the area that you're in.

It's the world's largest retirement community. The only thing that. I mean, there's more golf courses and bars and probably churches, but also medical facilities, tons of them.

How did you find out about the medical gas division and finding out about that opportunity?

So they had a company, a medical gas company from Jacksonville that would come down and do their inspections and do certifications and stuff like that, but they didn't want to do the work, the installation, the piping, the alarm systems, the vacuum pumps, the medical air pumps or compressors. And I don't think they're even allowed to do that work and inspect it. You have to. You can't inspect your own work. Met a guy here and he got me into it. I went down to South Florida, took the classes, became licensed, and came back up and started doing that. That was many years ago. As I bring guys on, we get them certified and licensed to do it. So now we do all of it in our area. It's not just the hospitals, but it's surgery centers, veterinarians, dentists, doctor's offices. We even put oxygen in doctor's houses.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, that was interesting to us, too. They had their parents living with them, elderly, on oxygen, and didn't want to carry the bottles around with them. So we piped the house and put in outlets in the bedrooms, in the kitchen and the living room. And yeah, work. Great.

There you go. All right. So you are multi generation. You come from a family of plumbers. You did a quick stint in the finance world, came back, you found yourself in Florida in this area that has a big retirement population, very good hospitals. You started your company with this hospital contract, started getting more customers just naturally through your interactions in the hospital and from there learned about this medical gas and all this other opportunity. So you said before, up until very recently, you really didn't do any marketing at all. It sounds like your company was practically all organic growth. Am I right in assuming that?

Yes. Yeah. Well, we had a website.

Yeah.

So I had a website for many years, but that was it. I never did Google, pay per clicks or ad lsa, none of that stuff. No faith. I just started Facebook a few months ago.

That's incredible. That's incredible. I never thought that was not on.

My bingo card mouth, all word of mouth. And referrals, which is still our biggest revenue campaign right now is still other than the hospitals first. And you could look on our titan and see it. And then it's existing customer second, referrals third.

That's incredible. I just want to say how impressive it is that you kept this organic growth, this referral business going through the recession, the giant recession of 2008, 2009, because I know Florida was really impacted by a lot of those foreclosures. And then also now the pandemic. About two and a half years ago, you had a pretty major life event that changed the way you thought about business. So can you tell me what happened?

I had triple bypass surgery. It was a Sunday. I was doing some yard work, working on my dad's truck. He just bought a fifth wheel camper and I replaced the tailgate for him and I was painting it on Saturday, installed on Sunday. I didn't feel well. Sunday night, something just was off. So my wife called my doctor, who we're friends with, and he's like, go to the hospital. So I went to the hospital and three days later I had open heart surgery. It was a wake up call. It was scary. I remember the night before the surgery, I had my wife, my brother and his wife, I'm showing them how to use service type. My wife had nothing to do with the business at this point, Nothing. My brother was a residential sales technician and his wife was our csr. I'm showing him how to use Titan the way I use it, running payroll, batching, posting, you know, Sending invoices out to the hospitals and stuff. They're recording it on video in case I wasn't going to be there the next day. It was a rough time.

Yeah.

And then after that, I wasn't working anymore. It was a good almost year probably. And really, to this date, I still don't work like I used to at all. I tried and just couldn't do it. So I realized that something's got to change. You know, I got to make this in case I'm not here. This has got to run by itself and be able to support my family and my team's families. So I started looking into. Plus, we ran through a hard time that revenue was gone, that I was bringing in. Everybody else stepped up, but it was like, we need to grow, you know, I need to do something different at the time. Instead, we were trying to cut costs, you know, expenses, make things run better. We were losing money or starting to. Not really, but it wasn't what it should have been. While this was happening. We had called service titan, said we need a backup copy of the company. And they brought, I think they sent me over. Somebody called us back and like, don't do anything yet. Go to Pantheon. I always wanted to go to Pantheon, except it was on the other side of the world. So I never went. I was too busy. But this time it was in Orlando, which is right down the road. Easy peasy, 45 minute drive. No big deal. Yeah, okay, we're going. So we went and it changed everything. I sat down at a table, a luncheon table, a lot of other contractors, and everybody went around the table introducing themselves. I'm so and so from here. And we do this much revenue a year, and everybody at that table was well over 10 million in revenue. And it came down to me. I was the last one. And I was like, oh, boy, I don't even belong at this table. Not to mention I've been with service tech longer than any of them, been in business longer than most of them. It was tough, you know, it was like, I suck. You know, I suck. I'm a good plumber, great plumber, crappy business owner. I should be further than these guys. I was going to quit. I was ready to quit. I was like, that's it. I'm done. I have no business doing this. I'm gonna just find something else. Especially that time when we were struggling. Yeah, well, a thing to do. Well, I ended up talking to some people at the event. I, I think I walked out of that lunch. I didn't Go to the next session. I met someone in the bathroom, and he kind of snapped me out of it and ended up talking to me for a while. He's a big figure in this industry, and he's like, I gotta get back to the guys at the table. When it came to me, I told him, I'm Chris. Service plumbing, Ocala in the villages. I do plumbing and medical gas. Before I could get how much revenue I don't do out of my mouth, they're like, you do medical gas? What? You know, what's. What do you mean? And then the other part was, you're from the villages. Everybody knew about the villages and scrunchies and swingers and, you know, the crazy old people. Yeah. Which is all true, by the way. It's hilarious. Not to get off track, but those old people make college spring breakers look like amateurs. They are, you know, living their best lives.

Good for them.

Absolutely.

May we all live to find our villages someday. You know what I mean?

That's my goal. End up in the villages. I'm. I'm this close, but. So he snapped me out of it and got excited again, got motivated again. My wife was there, my bookkeeper was there, and they were just over the top excited, learning stuff. And it was just like, oh, we got to do all this stuff. That gentleman introduced me to some people at service type me. Chris Chappie was one of them, a pro product guy. We became good friends over the last couple years now got me set up with all that, and I was excited. And then I was told by the same gentleman, you got to dive into everything, you know, get involved at the Facebook groups and start listening to podcasts, reading books, all that stuff. That's all you got to do to grow to learn this stuff. I mean, yeah, I can fix toilets and all kinds of plumbing stuff, but I really didn't know. I never looked at a profit and loss statement. I didn't even know what a KPI was at the time. No idea. Was there money in the bank? Yeah. Okay, we're good. So that was it. Yeah. So we started learning all. Everything we could about running a business. In the last two years have just been crazy. Our motto is Journey to the Top, which we stole from Pantheon 2023. One of the things I did was get on LinkedIn, and it was a Friday night. It's probably about 6 or 7 o' clock at night. I'm sitting in a swing on the back porch signing up with LinkedIn, and I'm looking for service titan stuff, groups. I Had no idea that that's how. It didn't work that way. But I searched for Service Titan and up pops up Ara Medician, the CEO of Service Titan. And the little button, I think it said message. So I hit the button, I'm like, message. And I was like, hi, I'm Chris from Service Plumbing. I've been a customer for a long time, would love to chat if you ever have the time. Never thought anything of it. Press send, I kid you not. Ten minutes later, he calls me fifth Insane. We probably talked for a couple hours that night on a Friday night. Since then, I've signed up with training for the guys. You know, doing a effective communication training. I found Doug Wyatt and Synergy Learning Systems and his program was awesome. I signed up with Jared Williams, the wealthy plumber. Got into his group and been heavily engaged in that. Spent some time with him and got a lot of the guys out of the group to go to Pantheon this year. So we had a whole group of guys went down to Pantheon and it was just great. Yeah, it was awesome. Life changing stuff. Seriously, it was, it made all the difference in the world. We've got a WhatsApp chat, which I didn't know WhatsApp was until this, where we're all in this group and we chat every single day, just trying to keep each other accountable and motivated and to keep growing and making our industry better.

I just want to say thank you so much for your honesty and thank you for sharing such a vulnerable moment in your life. You know, you started this part of our story here. Two and a half years ago, you had triple bypass open heart triple bypass surgery. Holy cow. You're showing your wife, your brother and your sister in law how to run Service Titan in case you don't wake up, which had to have been a harrowing experience. You're dealing with the revenue loss from you not going out on the field and you're like, I got to start cutting costs. And then you go to Pantheon, this incredible networking event, which I've talked about a lot on this podcast, and it just opened your eyes. I think you were just so honest with how, you know, just going around the table, people sharing their revenue numbers. It sounds like you probably had to release a lot of ego, if there was any ego there. Like, how did it feel to like tap into that vulnerability and understand or accept rather that it was time to get some help?

It was a roller coaster. It was up and down. It just, it was a wake up call. Before all that, before the surgery and everything, I was Completely content with where we were at and what we were doing. And then it was like, well, I can't do plumbing anymore. I can consult on it. I can call, but I can't go out and run a smart drain machine. It just physically, it was too draining. My guys, poor guys, they would. I try, and they'd be like, no, stop. Get away. Go away. Go away. Leave. Don't come here. Leave us alone. Let us do our thing. You. You can't be doing this. So I was getting pushed out, and then I'm back in the office, and the office is like, get out. Leave us alone. We're done. We got this. So I had nothing to do. I had no purpose anymore. And it was tough. So I started watching, you know, after Pantheon, that kind of gave me a purpose to. To learn how to do this. And watching your toolbox for the trades. I've watched a whole ton of those. That was one of the big ones. Tommy Mellows was another service. Business Mastery was another one. Waste no day. That's a really good one. So I started learning all this stuff and marketing and, you know, building company culture, and it's stuff we never did at all. So it's just started doing it and realized there's a lot more to this than I knew. And I just couldn't have been content with where we were at, because it just wasn't enough. I really. I don't know what would have happened if I wasn't here. If dise would even. People wouldn't exist anymore, you know, who knew? I didn't know.

Yeah.

So I had to do something, and I'm glad I didn't quit.

Yeah, I'm glad you did, too, because this is a fantastic story. It sounds like when you weren't able to do plumbing the way you used to, when you were physically not able to anymore, there was this moment of like, okay, where do I stand in this business? You had this aha moment at Pantheon, and I. I do love that you're telling me about, like, this luncheon where you're like, oh, no. And. And then. But you had this moment with this person in the industry that was like, nah, dude. Like, you can do it. And then you just completely immersed yourself in your business and learning how to grow your business. And only because you already said that you're about a year or two away from being eligible for the Villages. I don't feel so bad. Circling back to your age. I genuinely tried to avoid it, but I think this is a great example of how literally, at Any, I mean we see so many people in the industry right now. We got a lot of younger people coming in, some without trade experience that are running, you know, 20, $30 million shops. But you're someone who's been in the industry your entire life with the exception of that little finance blip. And in just three years ago you decided to completely change the way you approach doing business. And now service plumbing has completely changed and is doing really awesome things and you're really excited about the growth and where the company's going.

Yeah, we're doing everything. Did a rebrand. It's our new rebrand to appeal to the retirees of retro look. And I've got a marketing company now that spending a bunch of money on marketing and out there networking, going to all the events and the conferences. I've been in three conferences in the last three months. It's been great. Yeah. Starting with Pantheon. Pantheon was the kickoff. Just meeting people and talking to people and just absorbing all the knowledge and things that people are doing that have worked and haven't worked. And the best part I think is all these guys in the wealthy plumber group. A lot of these guys are just themselves just starting out young guys. But we're still at that same part in the journey. You know, I've got the commercial stuff and the residential stuff but the growth part, we're in that same level. So that's been good. The camaraderie, the collaborations just with like minded people in our industry and then getting backed by Ara and just had a great time, you know, in a pantheon. I hung out with Vahi's parents during the party.

Oh, nice.

They were awesome. And everybody's so helpful too.

Yeah, I'm really happy to hear that. So in the last, you know, two and a half, three years, you keep mentioning marketing several times but is there any particular insight that somewhat that you've learned that has really transformed or you think had the most significant impact on service plumbing?

Well, it goes back to the beginning. Marketing's great. The Google stuff is great. And I got a bunch of tips. I've learned a whole bunch of stuff about Google. Like I've, I'm going to get Google tattooed on my butt. They're loaded up. Yeah.

Oh wait, that might be the sound bite that opens this episode. That's hilarious.

I, I, I've dove into Google everything. So I figure if you know, if you're going to try and gain an edge with Google, use all their products. So Google Workspace Gemini AI has been fantastic. I've Even switched all of our tablets and phones to Google Pixel Pro phones.

Really?

So Google knows we're using it? Yeah. So I opt in for everything. The biggest thing, and it has nothing to do with recently, the biggest thing is the hospital. So we take the hospital aside. And my advice to anybody about marketing would be find the largest employer in your area and then go sit down and visit with them. Find out who's in charge, who you'd have to deal with, take them to lunch, offer all their employees VIP memberships, 10% discounts, priority service. So you're giving something back to them that they can give off to their employees and then provide them good service. And one of the things about working in a hospital that I learned, and I still list all the. All my team members, is it's not just about, you know, doing the plumbing and the work. It's about cleanliness. Everything has to be clean, clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. When they go into somebody's house now, you know, they're already. It's instilled in them, everything has to be clean, clean, clean. You don't have cables running down the hallway. You know, drain cleaning. There's a procedure to everything, and I think that makes us stand out to provide that excellent service. Do a little something extra. If that little lady has a light bulb burned out, change your light bulb for her. I don't care if you have to go to Lowe's, buy one. Just change it out for, you know, I don't look at it as people, as our customers. There are neighbors, plain and simple. They're all our neighbors. That's it. So treat them like they're your neighbor, but the largest employer, because then you can get all those customers, all those employees that work there. You got an edge to get them to become your customer and didn't cost you anything, a lunch. Being with these people for so long, I've become friends with them. We go to baseball games together. Our kids play baseball together. I'd sponsor their teams. You don't treat them as customers. Treat them as your neighbors and become friends. Jet, you know, go help them work on their car. I've had maintenance guys at the hospital call me up because they can't leave. My wife's got a flat tire. Can you go help her out? Yeah, sure. No problems, you know?

Yeah.

So going to leave and go do that for you? Yeah, it's just becoming friends with your neighbors and providing them good service.

Amazing, amazing.

That's how I did it for many, many years.

And now with the extra work that you're doing on the Google side of things and all with marketing that is being amplified even more, I'd imagine.

Right. Well, I'm in Ocala. The village is the next town over, a couple towns not far, 15 minutes away. But that's grown just huge. It's huge. Huge. So that's why we're marketing now is to get our brand out there, brand awareness in that area. I think they have 65,000 new home permits as we speak right now. Building.

Oh my.

It's insane. Yeah, it's absolutely insane.

You mentioned Gemini, Google's AI tool. So can you tell me a little bit? I'm very interested in how companies are using AI. So how are you using it at service?

I'm using it. I. The first thing I did was redo my price book descriptions with Gemini.

Really?

Yeah, they were great too. So hey Gemini or hey Google my case through what I asked it. Write me a task description to replace a 40 gallon electric water heater in a garage and then add ons would be a mixing valve and expansion tank. You know, test up and it's like done. You just kind of edit it, go through it, make sure it's good. It's all bullet pointed and then I just copy paste it right in my price book.

Amazing.

That was great. Yeah, that was awesome. For all the price book pro people out there, that's what you got to do. Bullet pointed, step by step what you're doing, fill that invoice up. No more. What? You know, replace 40 gallon water heater. That's not acceptable on an invoice for this much money. What you did, what that cost, how much you did nothing. But when you have it all listed out and you fill that page up, oh, that was a deal. You did all that for that price and it's exactly what you did. You know, it just made sense.

It's giving more value, more detail to the service to justify the price.

Exactly, yes. And it works great.

That's awesome.

All right, so Gemini works really well. I like it.

Do you like it better than Chat GPT? Have you used both?

No, I only use Gemini. Again, Everything Google, everything Google Google loyalist. I switch from Microsoft godaddy emails over to Google Workspace, the Business plus account with device Manager. So all our devices are managed by Google on the Google Workspace account. And switched all the phones, whether it was, you know, Samsung's and Apples, all to Google Pixels. I switched my Google Business profile or my LSA over to my new Google Workspace email, which is a company email ad it's not Gmail anymore. From Gmail, from my personal Gmail. The next week, our Google LSA ads explode. Loaded. Where we were getting like one to three ads a week. We're tripling that the following week just by changing the ownership.

Wow.

To the Google. Nobody may ever read the posts on Google or the offers or the storefront things where you put products in there, but you should do that, utilize everything Google, especially on the LSA stuff. I'm not a fan of the ppc, but the LSA is, is working pretty good for us.

So even on the storefront side of things, for your Google, you're posting things even if people don't read it. You're telling Google, hey, I'm using you. I'm a loyal customer. And you're finding that that is giving you the boost that you're receiving. So with all this growth, right, you're having to build your team up, expand a bit. You have this hire fast, fire fast mindset. Can you tell me a bit about that?

Yeah, I'll hire anybody that's breathing. Try them out. You never know. Yeah, you just never know. We'll try it. You know, we'll try you out. Usually within a week or two, you'll know whether you're going to keep them on or not. So hire fast, fire fast. You might interview somebody and they might stink at the interview, but that doesn't mean they're not a great plumber or effective communicator. You know, they're nervous, they're not themselves during the job interview. So you got to give them a shot. One of my guys, he's the grandson of my neighbor that lives behind me and she asked me, bugged me for a while to give him a job and finally gave him a job one day. He's green as can be. He's been with us about a year and a half now. We had a live event with Synergy. Doug Wire came out to our place and did a full day event with training. We gave him his own truck already, but he wasn't running calls. He was always a helper. And we were like, let's just send them. We've got all these calls, let's just let them go, you know, fly baptism by fire. And he's killing it out there. He's doing great. Yeah, everybody is. So.

Yeah, that's awesome. Where are you hoping service plumbing will be in the next year? Three years, five years? What's your goal?

Right now my goal is automation. So I need this to run without me. That's my goal, period. If I'm not here for some reason, whatever. I need this to be able to run and run smoothly and continue growing without me. Service time's a big part of that too. I couldn't imagine doing it without it. And everybody says, oh, I want to go this many million per year or this much profit per year. I get that. And we can shoot for the stars and say, I want to be a hundred million dollar service company in five years. I want this business to be able to take care of my family and my team and their families. So that's my goal. It's not to do a hundred million, but that'd be great if we did. I want to give you a good story. So I got another plumbing company here. That was another thing I learned. We have no competitors, all collaborators as far as companies go. I'll take out other plumbing companies owners to lunch and talk to them, tell them everything I've learned, try to help them. You know, the rising tide raises all boats. I went to a company here and I got them to sign up for service titans. It's a few months ago, not even as soon as they went live, you know, they had typical problems and so they called me, can you help us? And so I went over there and I helped them. We had a problem with credit card processing. They accidentally deactivated their business unit from a switch over from their other software. But I figured it out, fixed it for them, and I'm showing them some things and I'm like, need to do this dynamic pricing and showing them how. So I logged into my service titan in their office. Here's how I do it, you know, with dynamic pricing or client specific pricing and margin, and the first thing that pops up is your hourly rate. So they're looking, they're like, you charge what per hour? Is this for real? And I'm like, yeah, this is it. And they're like, how's that working out for you? You know, And I'm like, fine. Look, here, here's one of my jobs. Here's a five star review. Here's another five star. Here's another five star. Matter of fact, since I raised my prices, we get more reviews now, five star than ever we did before. And they're like, really? I'm like, yeah. And they're talking amongst them, we should raise our price. I'm like, yeah, you should do it right now. Here you go. I did it for them sitting right there on their service titan. I said, here you go. You matched my pricing. So now we're all in the same boat. And which is awesome because that just raises the level for the industry, especially in our area. All the other plumbing companies in my area, same thing. Here's what I do, here's what I've learned. Take it or leave it. And now this company, I can't handle all the jobs we get in all the time. So I refer to them and to another friend of mine, and then they do the same. They refer jobs back. Like they don't have a hydro jetter, so they refer hydro jetty jobs back. Or if they get into a medical job, doctor's office or something. Oh, no, you gotta call Chris.

That is awesome.

I want to start like a cars and coffee. Only plumbers and coffee in our area. So maybe once a month we all get together somewhere and just share what we've learned, what we're going through. And I think that'd be awesome. That's one of my goals this year.

I think that would be great. That's awesome. I love the way that you've. You took a really big personal challenge and you've. Sounds like you've turned not only your business around, but also your life and how you approach business. It seems like it's changed you a lot as a person.

Yes, it has. That pantheon was the start of it. The Synergy Learning Systems was the next piece of that puzzle to change in just how I look at life altogether. Completely different. It's good stuff. It really does. And it has changed everything for the better, for everybody. We're moving right along, just riding this wave.

Let me tell you. I am very excited to be a part of your journey to the top here. I can't wait to see where you're at in a couple years. And thanks for joining us today and sharing your experience, your journey with us. I am sure all my listeners are just as enthralled as I am, and we'll be rooting for you.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Thank you for being on Toolbox for the Trades. Chris, I really loved talking to you.

Yeah, you too.