Raising the Standard in Plumbing | Podcast Ep. 94 | Toolbox for the Trades

Lena Kuruz, owner at Plumbing Troopers in Florida. Welcome to the Toolbox for the Trades podcast.

Hi. Thank you for having me.

I am so excited to chat with you today. You have a super interesting story. You actually started your own plumbing company because you were frustrated by neighboring plumbing companies that you felt weren't doing a good enough job for the residents of your community. Can't wait to talk about that. But before we do, I'm going to start this episode the way I do every single one, which is, how did you get into the trades?

Okay, so my background is in design and marketing. I had spent 10 years working for advertising agencies doing branding for startup companies or for older companies that were just looking for a fresher look, and a lot of those were in the service industry. And in 2013, my husband and I decided that I would stay home with our first son. Son, given that my husband was just starting his restoration business and he was incredibly busy. So I. After 18 months, I was going a little bit stir crazy, and I wanted to go back into my industry, but I wanted a more flexible schedule. And around the same time, my husband had just met master plumber who created drain cleaning product made out of enzymes. And he was making it in his garage. And like I said, he was retired and he was making it, and he was not looking for. To start a new business or to work on this one full time. And he kind of had heard about me, that I was looking for a side gig, something in marketing. And he thought that this was a great opportunity for me to, you know, either partner up with him or, you know, he would sell me the recipe and I would just take it on my own. And I actually love the product. I tested it. I didn't know anything about plumbing, but when he explained how it works and how the drinks get clogged and how this enzyme, like, breaks apart the things, I'm like, how is this not like a common knowledge? How come, you know, plumbing companies don't give you that when. When you have, you know, grease stuck in your pipes? So I said, you know what? I actually think this is amazing. I want to buy the recipe and the connection to the. To the lab, and I want to do this by myself. So he agreed. I paid him. And this was now my. My baby. And I, you know, I knew that I was gonna have to invest a little bit of time and money, but this gave me flexibility. And I ended up, I mean, after a couple of months and jumping a million hoops, I actually got the. The product manufactured professionally and I got it into Fergan Plumbing Supply, which is a nationwide plumbing supply store. And I was selling to a couple of local companies but my, my main bread and butter was out of state. I did not understand why companies in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina were buying from me. But I couldn't get my local plumbing companies to buy from me. And they were rude. I would drive to these plumbing companies, you know, with my T shirt and my sample and, and you know, talk to the plumbing owners, introduce myself and I would explain the benefits. They were already knowledgeable and they were like no we don't. Why would I want to provide a solution to, to the customers? I want those drink calls. And I'm like, this is not about, you know, it's not about a cure. This is, it's just extending the service warranty and you know, it's, you should provide proper solutions to your customers. And I was giving examples how other plumbing companies were doing it and they were just not having it. So you know, my son started daycare and he was sick every week. So I was a one woman show. The shipping cost was killing me. The, the logistics of it. It was a lot, it made sense if I was local, if I was selling locally. So you know, after giving it good thought, I said, you know, I think we really need to like just shut this down and I need to go back to just getting a regular job. So sadly I had to, you know, sell my last batch. We had made our money back and everything was good but I was definitely a little bit bitter and I was talking to my husband and I went on rant about how I wish I had my own plumbing company and we will be techie and we will have modern technology and have proper solutions and we will have, we would be completely different from what's around. And my husband thought that it was a brilliant idea and his brother in law, I mean my brother in law was looking for, to start a new business and my husband had a little bit more free time and he thought that we should partner up. And I actually gave him a million reasons why we shouldn't do that. And before I was done explaining my case, he was already online forming a corporation. And seven years later, here we are.

That story is just so cool. I love it so much. You went from manufacturing a plumbing product, which I think is just awesome and shows your entrepreneurial spirit, you tried to sell it to these local plumbers. They were like, we don't want any of this. And you're like, I can be a better plumber than you. Which I think is awesome. And I love how supportive your husband was. Also love that he's in the trades too in the restoration side. So I just think that that beginning story is fascinating. And here Plumbing Troopers is and stands today and you are the sole owner. So after a few years of running the business, I know that you felt like something was kind of off and you later discovered there was a bit of a can of worms. So can you tell us what happened and what you learned from this?

So yeah, fast forward to four years later. From the outside, the business was looking fine. We had four or five plumbers. We had hired an office manager and an assistant. And at that time my involvement with the business was strictly marketing. You know, I would go to trade shows, I would help with the brochures and the business and websites and social media management. But I did take a 9 to 5 job in my industry. The business didn't happen. We never had enough money to put me on payroll. I had no customer service experience so we needed somebody that could do that. And the office is 45 minutes away. So my husband was also very busy and my brother in law was running the show and he had recently started construction company within our office. And I, you know, I told my husband, you know, it's been four years. I, every time that I go to the office, the phone is ringing. The plumbers seem to be extremely busy. We have great reviews. I just, you know, I don't understand how, you know, we cannot do distribution and we keep reinvesting and not growing like we had, you know, we had a good growth spur and then just suddenly we've been at the same spot for the past year or two so I wanted to go take a look. And you know, I had my second son so I had quit my job and he was ready to go to daycare. And I said, okay. I've heard that the office manager was sick, calling out frequently and the assistant had just quit, so she was by herself. So I'm like, this is my inner, I'm going to go in, I'm going to go help her and then I can take a good look at the operation and learn she can train me and I can start working in the company, even if it's for free, just to find out what's going on. And the minute that I went in, I think this was like a Wednesday. I went in on a Wednesday. She didn't know I was going to come in and I'm like, hey, I'm here to help you. I'm going to start answering the phones so that you can recruit, recruit and, and hire an assistant. And I'm gonna be more involved now. I'm gonna help you. And she freaked out. I could just tell in her demeanor that she was really nervous. So that was red flag number one. And by the end of the day, I had enough red flags going everywhere. I knew definitely something was off. And I told her, I told, you know, I called my, my brother in law and my husband and I said, oh my God. Hi. Are you guys looking into this business? I mean, I had a million questions and they neither could answer. Obviously, my husband was running his business and he was my brother in law's responsibility to run it. And I guess he just got caught up in his own construction company to just neglect. And he just let her do everything. So we were definitely concerned and we knew that she had to go, but it was definitely not the right timing. She, she was by herself and I didn't know anything. I had no access to anything. So I told her, like, let's set up interviews for Monday for an assistant. Luckily, we got one. And then that Friday she knew that I was aware of everything by now. She was nervous, she was texting a lot. And that Friday she just said, I quit. You know, so suddenly I was in charge of a whole business. I didn't know the plumbers. I didn't know how to do payroll. I didn't know where the safe was. I didn't know the procedures for anything. All I had done at that point was just answer phones and learned how we do Home, Home Advisor. And that's about it. I had a meltdown, a full blown meltdown. I went into the office on the weekend to try to catch up and like, try to figure stuff out. And then on Monday, the assistant came in and I'm like, oh, don't bother for an interview. You hired, you're hired. You know, we're gonna run this show together. And then, yeah, I, I, I was left in a mess. And I knew that some of the plumbers were doing side work. There was a lot of things going on and I, but I didn't know that. After a couple of weeks, I kind of knew what I had to do. And I was kind of loving the mess that I had gotten myself into. I felt like it was a fresh start. It was incredibly hard. But, you know, I did have my husband helping me. He would come in, answer phones with me. I had one of the plumbers, one of our first hires, Dean. He had been extremely loyal and he kind of had been Calling us, telling us to get a little bit more involved. So, yeah, I, I took it over and then I sat down with my husband and my brother in law and I said, I'm buying you guys out. This is, this is my business. Now.

That is just such an incredible story. And I really want to thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that because I think a lot of people wouldn't necessarily be so open. But there's a friend of mine I have in the trades who's also been this podcast, Susan Frue, who's mentioned this kind of stuff has happened to her before. And I think the only way owners can become knowledgeable this kind of stuff is when they share their story. So I want to thank you for doing that. That takes a lot of courage and I'm just continually in awe by you, Lena, of just the way that you grew into plumbing troopers, like just from starting it and then to taking it over and buying out your husband and your brother in law.

Thank you.

So just to kind of give a bit of a timeline, what, what year did plumbing troopers start?

2015.

And what year did you take it over?

2019.

Nice, right? 2019, a very, very calm year. Nothing big on the horizon, Nothing crazy.

Coming to the ringer. I got like six months to just get a grip on the business, get everything organized and bam. Pandemic.

Well, you've done a lot. You've done a lot in that short amount of time and that pandemic time. I know that you've grown from five to 11 technicians. So can you tell me a little bit about how you made that happen?

So, yeah, of course. When I took over, I looked at our crew and I didn't feel like you were represented. What? When I gave that rant in 2016, it didn't represent what I had said about how the type of plumbers that we would have, you know, they didn't have uniforms. You know, there was a plumber that reeked of cigarettes. We were just disorganized. The office looked like a bomb went off. It was dirty. It was just not a good environment. So my step one was to create an environment where I, what the people wanted to be there and where the plumbers will feel welcome. Like good quality plumbers will feel welcome and taken care of. You know, they're out there in the Florida heat hustling, and I wanted them to come into a good environment. I guess it's because I'm not in plumbing. Of course. I, I cleaned out the office entirely. I, I, I invited two friends and One of the plumbers and my husband. I even brought my kids all ordered pizza in the weekend and we went on a 18 hour cleaning spree. I got new computers, I got, I got, I, I organized the, the desk, I got folders, I cleaned out the, the desktop on the computers. When they came into work that Monday, everybody was shocked. And, and this was, till this day, people tell me that our office looks like a, an accountant's office. So that was one. Adding health insurance. You know, thank God, pre pandemic, you know, we, we got health insurance, proper benefits. I got clean uniforms. And I knew sometimes when I was in the office, some plumbers would call and they had questions. Obviously I have no plumbing knowledge. I couldn't provide answers for them. So I knew that I needed to grab my best plumber and bring him into the office. And that was very expensive because he was also the best producing plumber. But I knew I was going to take a financial hit. But I knew that having him in the office was going to improve the team that was out there. And he was going to, he was going to be a selling point to the good plumbers that can come in. So I started advertising saying, come to this plumbing company. We have a field manager, knowledgeable plumber that will help you when you're stuck. And that has been a huge thing. If you ever call, if you come to my office, you'll see Dean. He was our second plumber that we hired, so he's been with us forever and he answers every question. If a plumber is stuck, he drives over there to help them out. When they take pictures of the work that they've done, he inspects it. We call it a wall of shame. We have a wall of shame. So if he sees very poor, poor quality work, he will go and teach the plumber. He will go out and, and they, he will make the plumber break everything apart and redo it. We explain to the customer like this is not to our, to our standards. And I think that type of support in the office and in the field has helped me attract the best talent. And of course, my plumbers are our best recruiters. They get a job and then they tell, you know, the plumbers that they know about this great place. I would say 90% of the plumbers that have come in through my office have been employer referral.

That is awesome. And you mentioned Dean now twice. So definitely tell that he's a asset at Plumbing Troopers and he sounds like an awesome dude. And I never actually thought about it that way about having that, you know, master plumber inside the business who really knows everything and really sets the company up to a high standard. And I also love that when you see we could have done that job better, your company is very quick to be like, you know what? We're sorry, sir or madam or Mrs. But we want to do this job again because we know we can do better. And I absolutely love that. I think that's super cool. Now, I know you've since adopted. Speaking of hiring, a slow to hire, slow to hire, a slow to slow to hire, quick to fire mentality at plumbing troopers, opposed to that assistant from, you know, a couple years ago. How has that worked for you so far?

So it sounds. It sounds scary, but, you know, it has to be done. I feel like at least, you know, in. In Florida, they just kind of hire every. Anybody. Anybody could be a plumber. You know, everybody says that they're a plumber, and we. We are very careful who we choose to work with. We understand that everyone has issues and that plumbing is difficult, but, you know, if you develop bad habits and this or, you know, everybody's great on paper the first three months, and then, you know, true colors come out. And if the plumbers start developing a bad habit, if they're not treating the staff right, if they're not treating the customers right, if they start getting bad reviews or we start getting complaints, they know they're in a. There's a ticking clock. You know, you gotta fix your attitude or we're gonna let you go quickly. You know, and it's. It's a little bit of tough love. We have even provided psychological help to our plumbers. It is easier to fix a plumber than to just keep having, like, a rotation. So we've had success with that. So we do. We. We do try, but, yeah, if you don't change your attitude, if you're not a team player, you're gonna be let go. That's. You know, I think we've had like 20 plumbers come in in the past two years, but we've had to let go due to poor workmanship or bad attitude.

Yeah, Yeah.

I love what you said about that standard high. Otherwise, you're just not gonna be successful.

Yeah, I love that. You also offer help to the plumbers. I'm assuming when you said psychological help, that's really more of the attitude element, right? That's more of the how do you show up?

No, I mean, like a psychology. Like, I hired, as I call, like, I paid for psychology treatment. Get your mind right. You Know, I give an opportunity. I, I have a guy, he's a great, great, you know, technical skills, great personality. But you know, he has issues. They come out, you know, and then, you know, I offer the help. He took it and it's been great. I don't think anybody has ever done that. I mean I, I know that. I wish if I had that, if I had any, any issues with that and, and I got the help that you need, especially in the plumbing industry. Like, nobody talks about that. Nobody. There's any, it's, it happens a lot and like I said, it, it's very, it's really hard to find good quality plumbers. So if I've got a good one, I'll, you know, I'll work with you if you're willing to work with me.

I absolutely love that one. I personally am a big mental health advocate, so as a person, not just as the host of this podcast. I love that and you are too. I can definitely tell. Yeah. We had a guest a while back, Stacey four from H VAC Solutions llc. She hired a therapist to work on staff and. But between you and her, only companies I've ever heard to think about that, who've talked about that in some ways, like Chris Hunter has where he was like, you know, we teach our employees how to take care of their whole life, not just in business. But I really think it's so beneficial when you talk about the whole thing that makes a person not just, you know, their KPIs. So I applaud you for doing that.

Oh yeah, we, you know, I sit down with the plumbers and we talk. You know, I say, you know, off the record, I can't tell you what to do, but if you want the help, I'm like, I'm here to help. We have a very supportive system with each other. So yeah, it's a little bit of tough love. But I think that our deployments that we have, they'll, they'll do anything to stay, to keep this, to stay with us.

That's awesome. And to any plumbers listening out there, holy cow, talk about a boss who cares. Really, Lena, that is, that's awesome. So I know that you've personally ingrained the importance of reviews to every one of your plumbers. Reputation is huge in Florida. So why don't you tell me how you do that and how it's paid off.

So I think of it like the way I hire service for my house. I, you know, we are review based. Our generation is review, review based. We are homeowners now. And I know that if somebody is looking for a plumber, the first thing that they're gonna do is read the reviews. So it was a deal breaker for me. I have to have great reviews. If we get a complaint, I want to get to the bottom of it. I want to find out what happened and how can we make it right. Because I want clean reputation, and we have that. Thankfully, our plumbers have done an amazing job. We have service titans, so they don't get a choice. The. The review link, it's automated, and I tell them, I'm like, you know, it's gonna go out. Whether you like it or not, it's gonna go out. We're gonna hear what's gonna happen. So we get the reviews organically. You know, they. The customers, I always tell them, I tell your customers to leave a review to ask for you. You know, so that. That's. That's been a. A priority of ours since day one.

That's awesome. And you have pretty good rating right now, right?

Yes. Even in 2020, we're not even. We did not have paid advertising on Angie's list, and we got 2020 service award. The. The service award. That's incredible. They sent us the certificate because so many. We had a profile, but that was not paid. And people left us so many good reviews that they. They sent us the award even though we were not listening.

I can imagine you just, like, sitting in a. Like, on a really comfortable chair, just exhausted from 2020, and then like, congratulations, you have an Angie. Angie award.

It was brutal.

Yeah, that was. I can't imagine. Um, so I know that marketing is really where you originally thought your career was going to go, marketing, social media. And obviously you brought those talents to plumbing Troopers. I honestly love the name Plumbing Troopers. FYI. I don't think I mentioned that to you the first time I spoke with you, but I would love to know how you market to customers. You know, you mentioned that you, as a homeowner yourself right now, you kind of know what customers want. So how do you translate that into your marketing materials right now?

So I. I have this argument all the time that businesses. I mean, I might sound a little bit crazy, but I really do feel like businesses are like packaged goods. You know, think of tomato sauce. Tomato sauce is all, like it really. You don't. You don't taste it. You're just looking at something and you're going for what package you like. Right. I really feel that businesses is the same thing. I think having excellent marketing and branding really sells you and I, honestly, I know we're a good business regardless, but I really do feel like our. The name, the branding, the social media, the friendliness, it gives us business. So, of course, we went into great detail when we were creating the name, when we were creating the logo, when we were wrapping the trucks, what would catch attention? And I. We know we have brochures to facilitate communication. I feel like having that, it's a huge advantage. And luckily for me, it's free for me to try it. I do it myself. So I test different things. And what sticks is what we keep. That's what we keep. So I think that helps a lot.

Nice. Well, what marketing channels are working best for you right now?

You mean like lead sources?

Yeah, lead sources. Everyone's favorite topic, Secret sauce.

So we were huge on HomeAdvisor in the beginning, and it was tricky. You know, it's a little. It's a. It's tough when you have just all, all your eggs in one basket. It. It was, it was tough. But we have diversified a lot in the past year and, you know, we are on everything possible. Everything possible. We have Angie's List, where goo. We're spending on Google, we're spending on social media, the Better Business Bureau, we get Home Depot leads, we get businesses from other businesses. We also on, I mean, I, we have a couple of old school, like, booklets that go out that interestingly enough work. I don't know how because I used to say that that was old school and nobody did that, but they do work. And then, yeah, I mean, that's, that's where we, where we are and that's where we get our leads from.

That's awesome. I bet you. I bet you those booklets work. I bet you those booklets work. Because Florida has a very specific demographic. And you know, I had, I had. Oh, my goodness. Crystal. Crystal Williams from Lemon Seed Marketing, she said to me once, she's like, you know, the phone book works for us because that's, that's the town that we're in. And I think I've heard this over and over again on this podcast, is there is never going to be a secret sauce that works for every single company because it's so dependent on who your customers are, what your demographic is, where in the country you're located. So I love that you're out there and you're testing and you're figuring out what's working best for plumbing troopers.

Yeah, so I actually had a little bit. So I have a little bit of SEO knowledge and how to see the Google Analytics. So I went into our website and I saw, I clicked to see where our, where people were coming from to our website. And I just went to all those websites and reached out and put a little bit of money on each to see what was working. And some of those were those books that I didn't have an advertisement, just our name was there, but we weren't paying for it. So I'm like, hey, let me bump it up. Let me create a profile, see how that turns out. So that was, that was good information that most plumbing companies probably wouldn't have.

Yeah, no, definitely SEO. It makes a difference. So I know that you're investing a lot back into the business right now by adopting technology and tools that help you succeed. So tell me about one of the most recent investments that you made.

Yeah, sure. So two of the biggest investments we made the past year, one being service titan. You know, I had gotten, I tried to do that when we were smaller, but it just, it didn't make sense at the time. So we did service time, which is full round. We could do email marketing. You can do get the reviews and all that. And then I noticed that we get a lot of cast iron replacements here in Florida. I'm not sure if you know, but prior to 1974, all homes were made mostly built with cast iron. And for some reason in Florida that was supposed to last 7 to 170 to 100 years. But in Florida it's not working there it's actually rotting. Most of them are failing. So we get a ton of whole home re pipes and you know, collapsed drain lines. And we were spending a ton of money getting this massive truck to help excavate and vacuum out the dirt. So I said, you know, I'm like, we're spending, I think at some point we were spending like 15 to 20 thousand dollars a month just renting this machine. And I said, we need to buy our own. I think we should just buy our own. There was only one company that had this truck. So I started doing my homework, researching, researching what was the best machine possible. And we invested a lot in this, this machine to lower our cost and we can pass those cost savings to our customers. You know, we're not paying a lot of money for it. Like it's ours now. So we are one of very few companies that have their in home back truck.

That's awesome. And also talk about knowing your niche, right? I wonder if the cast iron, I wonder if they don't work because of humidity in Florida maybe or Just all the crazy weather like the hurricanes.

Yeah, we don't, we don't, we don't know, but a lot of the homes and, you know, we've had a lot of people. With the influx of the pandemic, a lot of people move down here and they buy homes, not older homes, not knowing that the pipes are rotted. If they don't do a proper inspection, they won't see it. They'll just buy the house and then they'll find out they gotta pay $30,000 to replace those pipes. So we get a lot of people who have done the inspection, they're about to buy the house, but they want them replaced before they do that purchase. So we get that scenario all the time. And so we go out, we have our cameras, we have, we invested in, top of the, top of the, you know, the best plumbing cameras possible out there. And we do the camera inspections, verify that everything's, you know, not working properly. We send the videos to the insurance companies and work that out.

Nice. Very cool. So we've talked about a lot of stuff today. Obviously, I was really interested just in how you got to the business, how you notice the business need your help. You took it by the reins, you really mastered it, and it seems like you guys are really positioned for some awesome growth, and I'm excited to see it. Is there anything we should have talked about that we didn't talk about?

I don't think so. I think we covered a lot of ground.

That's awesome. So I have to ask, you know, you came into this business not really knowing anything about plumbing. How are you now in terms of like, like, could you, like, could you do some basic plumbing jobs at this point?

Point.

Are you still.

Absolutely. No. It's a, it's a joke in my office. They know. I, I can't. No, no, I can't. My husband is a wannabe plumber and, you know, he got his leak detection certification. He's very hands on. I can't, I, I, I know some terminology, but that's as far as it goes. I have, that's why I have Dean. I focus on the business, marketing, taking care of everybody. I think I heard somebody, one of your podcasts. What is it? The green manager. The. What is it? It was like the opposition where that person makes everybody happy.

Oh, the dream manager from Richard and Felicia.

Yeah, that's definitely. I think I fulfilled that role in my office. I'm the one planning the barbecues and the, the employee activities and all that. But I'm definitely not Plumber. I'm. You're not gonna see me in a truck any. I wish.

Oh, you never know.

You never know. But I do want my kids to. Because of this experience. I do want my kids to be hands on, like his father. Like their father. And. And, you know, I told him, like, maybe you guys should go work at Troopers when you guys are, you know, of age and do an internship and get hands on. And I see some of these young plumbers making really good money and being very hands on. Pay for college if they want to. If they ever want to take that route. That's a great way to do it. I mean, we don't have enough plumbers. There's a lack of plumbers. I wish we had more female plumbers.

I wish we did, too.

I've always said, I'm like, I wish I could hire a female plumber.

We'll put it out there in the universe. And maybe there's a female plumber in Florida who's listening to this and is like, lena sounds pretty cool. Maybe I'll go work for her.

Yeah, come by.

All right, I have a couple final questions for you. One, if you could give yourself one piece of career advice, if you go back in time and give yourself one piece of career advice, what would it be?

Don't ever take your eyes off the business. 100%. You need to always be involved. Just because you hire a rock star manager, a rock star office person, doesn't mean that you get to just approve the payroll, approve the payments, sign off on everything without really digging through and looking into your business. That, number one and number two, I would listen to. I got into listening to audiobooks recently about, you know, in business and the service industry. My commute to my office is 45 minutes, so I'll. I'll listen to some stuff, get ideas. I wish I had that. I wish I had done that sooner. That would be it. That's it.

That's awesome. What book are you. Are you listening to right now or. What's a recent book you listen to that you really enjoyed?

I don't remember the name, but it's by Simon Sinek.

Simon Sinek?

Yes.

Start with the. Why? Maybe that's his TED Talk.

I don't remember the name, but I'm listening to it. A friend of mine recommended it. She. She actually, she. She's a manager. She manages 15 technicians in restoration. And I was having a chat with her and she got me into it. She said, you gotta hear this podcast. And, you know, I actually listened to Tools of the traits for a long time ago. Like, I signed up and I listened to a couple of them, too.

Oh, thanks. I'm glad. That's why I do it. That's why I do it. All right, so final question. If you had to choose a song to be the soundtrack of your life, what would it be?

So I. I would say Under Pressure by Queen.

That's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful answer to that question. That is great. Lena. I had such a fun time chatting with you. Thank you so much for being a guest on Toolbox for the trades.

Thanks. Thank you.