Titan Shops | Express Plumbing Service W/ Ben Davis

Well, look who it is. I'm Ben Davis, and this is Express Plumbing. Welcome to my shop. So here we are. Express Plumbing Service. We've been in business for 14 years. We have 44 employees, and we are proud to say that we are one of the best places to work here in Idaho. Welcome to the csrs. Well, this is my favorite room. This is the first interaction with the customer. The most important part that you can have in any kind of company. Service titans really streamlined this process. It's also good to have some kind of old school in there. You know, you gotta have a map, right? You can't have all this technology surround you and not be a little bit old school. This building used to be a pawn shop, and I used to come to it all the time when I was a kid. They were on the phone all the time. Thought it was pretty interesting to have a 1918 phone. I mean, it still kind of works. I don't know if it'll zap me or not. I love it. My life started off pretty rough. At 8 years old, my dad decided to leave. So then it was just my mom. My mom was really struggling. They decided to put me in foster care homes. I just had this bag, and it was all I had. I didn't have any toys. And every time I just grabbed my bag, five outfits, and off I go to a different foster care home. I was going to a school in Napa High, and there was a janitor there. He barely even knew me. And he fought tooth and nails to become a foster parent. He took me in and he just really taught me how to be honest, not to tell a lie. Always tell the truth. Like, you should just live by this code. This was the moment my life changed altogether. This is the corporate office. It's basically the heartbeat of express Pong service. Here's our arcade that we go to town on. Challenge each other. Oh, Wipeout. We end up playing like Cruis' n usa, Mortal Kombat, Mario Kart, Pac Man. We actually play a lot of Frogger too. You know, I gotta say, I don't care who says what about these video games. They are great stress relief. They provide teamwork. There's just something about bringing one of your guys in here and battling them. You get to pull away from work, you get to have a couple laughs. Yeah, it definitely brings people together. That's what really makes the company take off. I mean, that's just priceless, man. And I just want. I'll take it. So I started getting into the trades. I ran across Plumbing and I loved it. Talked to my wife and I said, honey, I really want to start my own company. We pulled all the money out of our savings. We took a second on our house. Ten days later I quit and I started my own company. Up here we have the sales metrics for the technicians, the CSRs, close rate, how many calls they took. Pretty awesome. It was a struggle. I mean, I thought I knew it all. And then I started my own company up and I realized I knew nothing. We're breaking even. We're not making any money. We're not. We're running all these KPIs ourselves. Like we just have our own boards everywhere. Somebody mentioned service Titan to us and we took it on. We grow, instant grow. A million dollars that year. I think this year we'll end up doing 5.7 million. And it's because of service type. Special part about the back of these vans is we put hand wash sinks in every single van. We're dealing with plumbing, heating and cooling all the time. This is a great way just to keep, keep their hands clean. They got their bar soap, they just turn on the water and off they go. And you just can't beat it. I'll do anything for my guys to keep them safe on the job, anything to take care of my guys. I realized at that point in time, there's two different kind of customers. The ones that I'm aiming for right now are not the ones that I want. And I'm driving around these old vans that just are terrifying. I want customers to be like, oh man, do you see what my plumber's driving? You know, like, look at their uniform. Look at what that guy does for his people. My whole culture in my company starts to shift. This is our training facility. We're moving in a direction that we've never seen before. And that is by educating everybody. We have water heaters that work. We have a two compartment sink, laundry sink, kitchen sink, toilet, two different styles of lab, a urinal. I mean, this is where it's at. We can clog these drains. We've set them up so they're really easy to clog. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at them. It's about how much knowledge you can throw at them. What can I do to make them better? We keep our employees KPIs running at all times so they know who the leading technician, leading installers are. It kind of gives them something to fight for. The information that you're getting on a week to week basis and the way that you're able to see each technician and see their average ticket and get a graph on how your company is doing and be able to see that growth that's really boosting as a whole. It's helping you create something that I think would almost be impossible if you didn't have service time. The more you grow with the software and the more you invest into it, the better off your company will do. It's just proof that you can do it. You can get past those hurdles and achieve anything you really want to. At the end of the day, I came from nothing. All I had was a bag of clothes. So anything from this point forward is more than the bag of clothes I had. And to me, that's pretty valuable. I'm Ben. Dan. Thanks for visiting my shop. Until next time, Express Style.