Toolbox Down Under: A Peek Into the Australian Trades Life | Podcast Ep 216 | Toolbox for the Trades

Hello, contractors, and welcome to Toolbox for the Trades. My name is Jackie Aubel, and today I am talking with Scott and Vicki Irwin, the owners of Network Plumbing in Sydney, Australia. Scott and Vicki were actually the first contractors to pioneer Service Titan Down Under. I hope you enjoy their energy, their humor, and their business insight as much as I did. Scott and Vicky Irwin, you are the owners of Network Plus Plumbing, and you are our first ever Australian shop on Toolbox for the Trades. Welcome, guys. I can't wait to talk to you.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. And stoked to be the first. We'll see how it goes, right?

You're gonna do fantastic. A little bit of a background, guys. Since we started Toolbox for the Trades about five years ago, we've always had a small Australian listenership. And I am so excited to take the show finally to some Australian customers and talk about the Australian experience of being. Being tradespeople. So let's get into it. I want to start out with an icebreaker, though, and I want to know what's your favorite thing about working together as a married couple?

I could say when Scott leaves the office, that would kind of start off with an ice. I guess my favorite part is that we get to share time together all day, every day. It's true. I mean, working together and living together can be very, very difficult. Very challenging at times, but we make the most of it. We tend to laugh at each other all day long now, so it's good.

I think one of the better things working together for us on our world is that Vic has the whole back end of this business covered and I had the front end with the guys covered between different managers and stuff, that generally that's how it works. So if I know the VIX on the back end coverage is accounts, marketing and HR and any of that stuff, all good. And then the front end's pretty easy for us. So that is really important to me to know that it's covered and I don't have to worry about it as a husband and wife. And then if there's issues we talk about at home, try not to talk about work at home. That's new. Pretty impossible, I would say, most of the time. But we have a lot of fun. You can tell we love what we do and we love the people who work with. Makes work coming to work really good.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So, Scott, why don't you tell us the early days of starting Network Plumbing and some of the challenges you faced when you started because you started the company. I believe in 1987, right?

Yeah, 1987. 11th November. Actually. I didn't. Of course I love and I'm so passionate about what I was doing. I really didn't have any challenges. Not what I would call challenges. If there was the one challenge in our world, it was probably came in financial crash. 0708 whatever. I'm thinking that. And that was when we really got hammered and we lost half because we were at that point in time we were probably 90% commercial work being commercial maintenance and 10% residential. And we lost. I think we were doing $6 million a year at that time. And we lost 50% of our revenue overnight. Just bang, gone, gone. And we look and we were heavily into property investment in commercial real estate ourselves. And we just got absolutely nailed. It was a real suck time for a lot of people. The good thing about us, we picked that 3 million bucks that we lost. We picked that up within six months. So that happened in. In December, over December of January. We were back at 6 million bucks by the following year.

Got it.

So 12 months there and then we sw. We'd done a pretty much a full focus swing to into residential. So that was. That was a challenge. I reckon that's the only challenge.

I don't know. I'd also put it down to we at times actually grew the business so we expanded and put more team members on. But yeah, this is what we want to be doing. And then all of a sudden we went, oh no, this is way too hard. And we just retracted back. And so while we kind of grew and then we kind of pushed back again and then we kind of grew again and went, oh, do we really want to do this? And then once we found the right team members, the right people that could help us to actually grow in the right direction. That's when we really. So that would be my only challenge that I think that we have.

It's to us or definitely to me if we come to work. And we love what we do, love the people we work with. What challenges is really that hard? No one's dead. No one's dead. It's not a bad day really. So I don't look at us that we have a lot of challenges. Money fixes most problems in our world. So like we break something, we just pay for it. You. And that's basically our worst issues really. As long as no one gets. We're in front of the game.

Dang.

What is it about Australia where you got so much optimism? I absolutely love it. Maybe just because I'm a jaded New Yorker. But wow, what a. What a fantastic. What a fantastic answer.

But seriously, if you're not. If you're not optimistic, you can't do this. If you're not optimistic, you're a pessimistic person in this world. You're never going to get anywhere in personally or at work. Just won't happen. The other thing I think that really, we nail this really well here is we have fun. Like, we have a ton of fun in our. Probably too much. Like, we're not really that professional at all.

Oh, no. On the. On the exterior, we have to be professional, but on the interior. Yeah. No, not really.

So, Vicki, you joined the company in 1992. So I want to know what it was like transitioning to working with Scott.

Well, I loves it.

She loves it. Can I say she loves it?

I love it. I actually met Scott in 88, so just after he started working for himself. And at that time he was all by himself. And then he put his first apprentice on. So I was working in hotels, and then I went into real estate. And then we got married in 95. Gosh, it makes me sound really old. After that, I just decided it was time to really put our focus into one place. And so that's when I kind of joined the team, which is fantastic. It was a team of three at the time.

She's actually left a bit out. She actually did all the paperwork for me. Yeah. At night.

Yeah. So I'd work during the day, and at night I would. Oh, actually, I was working nights at the time, and during the day I would do all the paperwork and book work, so.

Wow. All right. And so, Scott, just to keep me on the same page, you mentioned when 0708, when that crash happened, you guys were doing mostly commercial. Did you start off doing commercial work primarily for plumbing?

I love construction.

Construction. There you go.

So my. If. If you wanted to say if I wanted to do plumbing, I would do construction every day of the week because I love it. I love building stuff and that. We did a lot of new work back then. It was tricky building stuff, commercial and. And residential, and then you'd fit your sewer choke in or whatever on the way home from there. So the transition happened. We started doing a lot of what you would call condominium work. We call strata work. It's. We. They were one of our first customers, and that side of the business grew pretty well. So that ultimately replaced the commercial side of our world. So we don't even touch commercial now.

Yeah.

Yeah. So now Are you mostly residential?

Yeah, wouldn't we be?

Yeah, we get a full, full suite.

We don't do any builders, nothing. That's all. It's either residential or strata work.

Got it. Okay, cool. And strada. I'm still familiarizing myself. Yeah, I'm still familiarizing myself with the Australian landscape. Is that also through. Would that, I guess, be considered, like, commercial in the way service titan thinks about it?

Anywhere where you don't get paid straight away would come out of the commercial flag and resi is COD work.

Okay, cool, cool. All right. So you guys mentioned, you know, you had the big crash in 07 08. I feel almost kind of silly that I was like, oh, my gosh, that affected you guys, too? Of course it affected them, Jackie. Like, this was a world crash. It was a world crash.

It wasn't a nice time at that time either, because we saw a lot of people that were in the industry that just didn't make it through. We felt really blessed that we could actually make it through that. So. Yeah.

Yeah. And, Vicki, you also mentioned that you had these moments of growth where you would grow and then you would kind of come back. So tell me a little about. About that. I want to hear about these big milestones.

Yeah, we. We kind of, you know, we would put more people on, and then all of a sudden it would just be like, oh, this is way too hard. We'd had staffing issues. It was. It was more HR related, I think. Don't you think?

Yeah, HR department at that time was.

A bit sketchy, was all him. No, it just. It just got a bit too hard. And we didn't have, like I said, the right people in the right place.

One thing you do in business, if you put the right people in the right spot that have the right skill sets, life is so much easier.

Yeah.

Well, tell me, how did you learn how to put the right people in the right seats? This is something that I've heard on the show before, and I want to hear how you guys learned how to do it.

Putting the wrong people in the right seat, that's the easier way.

Learning the really big.

That that comes. You know, I think that's. We were lucky. A lot of our guys that are in the right seats at the moment have been homegrown for us and been with us 15, 20, 25 years. We've had a few guys that we've hired without from other companies that I had met or known that I thought, they're going to fit, they've got the right culture Fit right belief and right knowledge to run that position for us. And they've come over and they've really excelled. Basically how we got there. I mean there's no special magic wand here. It's, it's trial and error. Some people you think going to be awesome turn out to be RS for you. And that, that's just, that's always, I think, always going to be that way.

Yeah. So tell me about your company culture. I mean we already got a taste of it a little bit kind of in just our side comments here. What type of culture are you guys fostering at Network Plumbing?

Well, first it's a foster of believing. Right. So you've got to. We want everyone to have great self esteem, to believe in themselves, believe in their family, believe in what they do and understand the price point of giving back. It comes at a price point. Right. Spend a lot of time getting that right. And also having fun. If no one's hurt, rejoice. Today, it's a great day. Doesn't matter whether we make a lot of money, we lost a bit of money. So it is what it is. As long as everyone comes home in one piece, it's a great day and that. And a lot of people forget that. Don't take it so seriously. One day, one day out of 365 out of. Out of a decade, what's it matter, you know, fun and enjoy the moment because I'll tell you what, life goes so fast and when you.

Gosh, doesn't it.

It just goes. You don't realize when you get, when you get in this business. I started, I was 21, I think, right. 58 next birthday. And in fact it goes frigging fast. Bleak. And it's gone. Our children are working with us now. They're 17 and 18. It goes fast. So don't get caught up on the small ship.

You guys are touching upon topics I've talked about on the show before. But the big one here is mindset. I think is just keeping that optimistic mindset, keeping that it's not that serious mindset. I really, really like that a lot.

I guess you don't realize any of this until you've had someone get injured working with you or die working with you and you get a real reality check of what's important in life. And maybe that never happens. And hopefully that doesn't happen to a lot of people. Right? But if it does, it actually brings you well back into perspective of what's really important. And a lot of people lose that shit. They don't understand that. Hey, money comes and goes. It's a, it's a vehicle to do stuff. Life is precious. Hang on to it and have fun. If you don't have fun and don't enjoy it.

Yeah.

Why do it? Find something else.

Yeah.

And that's, that's one of the biggest things in our culture. And I talk to, I train all in a lot of our apprentices and anyone in our business really who wants to listen to me.

Anyone who wants to listen to me, I will. 100 there they are. Welcome to not me except the wash.

Is like guys, if you don't like what you're doing, don't waste your life on this. Go find something that makes you happy. Doesn't matter what. You got to be happy what you do. Otherwise what a shitty life. A lot of people do because they get forced in that way. But this industry, maybe I can just speak to plumbing on plumber. Right. There is no better industry on this planet to work in as far as I'm concerned. Like you work outside, you hang out with great people. You usually only work a five day week. It is fantastic. The flip side is I go work in an office. I hang out from nine to five in an office. I'd spend all my time in traffic. I know where I'm going to be.

Oh wait, that's what I do.

But you can get where I'm coming from. Like really for, for if you're the right person. This is a fantastic industry.

I feel like instead of asking kids what they want to be when they grow up which is you know a common thing question that we ask in the States. I think they should, we should ask them what kind of lifestyle do you want? And it sounds like you've created a life for yourself that is, that reflects the kind of lifestyle you want for sure.

But we also want the people to work with us to have that same lifestyle.

Yes. Yeah.

They're all. And that starts with a mindset and a belief. So we can, if we can work with that. And that is everything in our business. I reckon in the last, I would say five years but especially last three years we've spent a lot of time working with people. Mindset and belief. I've traveled the world extensively in plumbing business main across the US and we have like Tommy go to Tommy's garage a one garage door store and you've got all these quotes on his walls and stuff. What we noticed on that whole wall was everything that was written there was actually what we believed and part of.

Our own mindset that we just set.

Up day to day and you really didn't notice until you put them all off on the wall. There's probably 30 sayings on that wall. And we just did one in Melbourne. It was absolutely classic. And what we do now is we bring our teams into those, into that room and we just pick what relates to you. It just makes such a difference if we can do what others don't. For our people that work with us, they're going to stay with us a lot longer. Yeah, you just care about them. And that's. That's the end of the day. That's it.

You know, it's so interesting. I've been doing the show now. I think you guys are going to be episode 217 or 2 18. And, you know, I want to talk about how you run your business, how you found success over the. The years that you've been doing business. But it always, always comes back to culture. No matter what, it always comes back to culture.

Culture over cash every day of the week. Yeah.

And a lot of our people have been with us for a very long time. Yeah, we've had some that have been here for, I think, 26 years.

Two 26.

Two at 26 years.

Couple 20. Keeping the 15 range. They stay. But we. These people are friends. They're not just colleagues we turn up.

To work with, but actually the family, everyone's family.

We look after them. There's ever a problem, we're there. It's just. You just try to treat people the way you want to be treated. It's pretty simple.

And we'd like to do lots of social events with the team as well, as many as we can. Whether it be just drinks up at the local pub or if it's out for dinner. We do Christmas in July. We do all different sorts of things to keep us all together and in sync.

It almost makes me feel like you could be doing anything for your business. Like it doesn't necessarily have to be plumbing. It could literally be any service or any type of business.

It could be anything.

At the end of the day, we're dealing with people. Our belief, or my belief, is that our people that work with us are our most important people, more important than a customer. They're our rock solid goal, so we gotta look after them.

I think that's incredible. Do you guys. Not to put you on the spot, but do you have a favorite quote that's on your quote wall?

The one I use at the moment is do what the other 99 won't do?

Yeah. Be the 1% and do what the 99% won't do.

That's a good quote.

Yeah.

Well, it's just simple. It's a really easy one. It's easy to remember for everyone and it just tells you we do what 99 other people don't do, we're going to be better. Be the 1%.

I'm curious, when did you bring electrical and air conditioning into the mix?

Two years ago.

Two, three years.

Took all the years away. I have no idea.

In there somewhere. Yeah. Three years ago. I think it hasn't been a great success. We could have done it better.

Yes.

Are we getting better? 100%. Different mindsets again, different team working with. Challenging at times for sure, but definitely heading the right way. Now.

What did you learn from it? What was some. If you could go back in time and tell yourself something, don't do it.

Can't say that one. Seriously, what have we learned from it? The plumbing is really good.

Yeah.

Knowing. Knowing your actual industry is a lot easier than going into an industry that you really have never worked physically in before.

I think the other thing, a thing I've noticed really is you look at in the States, right. Everyone I go and see do mostly 60, 70, 80, 90% air con and 10% plumbing when we're the way around, right. And I know why they stay heavy in aircon and light and plumbing and vice versa. For us it's just knowing what you know as a owner of a business and then trying to get your head around another product or service that you don't really, you're not in the same passionate level. That would be the hardest thing. And we're working there, you know, we've got to find. And this comes back to hiring different managers in that business to make it roll. And also aircon or H Vac in Australia is very different to the states. You're a reactive marker of a lot of service. Most of the companies here do a lot of construction work and a lot of service. There's not, there's very few dedicated service companies. So that's very different. And then you look at house, what is actually spent in, in percentage of income or value of a property in the state on aircon to what they spend here. So you take a place in the States where there's a plenty of houses worth 2, 3, $400,000. Well, you can't find a house in Australia for 2, 3, $400,0000. Right. But that person that has a house in the states at 300k will spend 10, 15 on their aircon.

H vac.

H vac. Right. That doesn't happen because if you go 3 million dollar house, they're not going to spend 300 grand on their aircon. So it's a very tricky little. So that in my opinion, it's very different. Maybe I'm just dumb at that. Still working process. Right. So we'll get it right. And if we look at our Melbourne business, there is 60% their business is aircon.

Oh, interesting.

And 40% or 30% plumbing and probably 10% electrical. The rest is electrical.

You have the Sydney location and the Melbourne location.

Yeah. So very different business, different people in it. Great business. Great logo. Great. Great branding.

Great team.

Great team.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, you know, you say that, you know, you're really passionate about plumbing. You brought in the other trades a couple years ago. Were you inspired to grow because of how much you value your team and you want to give them more opportunities?

100%. No way I would grow if I didn't have a great team. Wouldn't even contemplate it. And it definitely makes their life better because if we've capped ourselves at a revenue point, we can't help them any further destroying their life. And that really is not what it's about. It's about trying to give them the best opportunity possible.

Mind you, if you were to ask them did you enjoy the challenge, they'll probably say no.

I disagree.

I reckon a few of them were like, oh, join.

Why don't you guys tell me a little bit about how you got started with service time? Because I believe you are our first customers in Australia.

What a story.

Actually that really starts. So when did we first see service time? 2012, maybe 2010. When it first. Yeah, long time ago.

We were at a wet show.

We were in a show somewhere in the States.

Could have been a pumper show at that time.

Might have been a service world somewhere. And we saw Service Titan. A few of my friends already had service titan and were playing with it.

Friends in the U.S. let me be clear.

Yeah. And this is when Ara and was running the trade shows, turning up himself like that's how long ago this was. And we got talking so we really loved this product. And he said, yeah, one day, but not today. And this went on for years on talking what we've 10 years.

Years. And during that time we were using other programs and we were like, oh, if only we had service hiding, how much better would this be?

And then I think I'm freaking 2015, maybe 16 had a meeting with Ara and he brought in Tom, who I'd met.

Tom Howard.

Here's Tom. This is. Tom's gonna look after you today. So we started talking to Tom and he's saying, yeah, yeah, it was a fob off because it was too hard. And I get, I understand when you get through all this, you understand why it was too hard. But we kept talking and kept talking.

We went away a bit disappointed again.

As usual, and we kept at it. And then I, we. I met up with Tom again. We started chatting more seriously about it. Tom spoke to Varje and they said, well, let's have a crack. And then so Tom got sort of pushed over to come to with Matt Laurel, who's a God in Service Titan World, to come over here and start playing with her and see if it would work. So they came over for two weeks, which was fantastic.

It was so lovely of them to do that.

And then they stayed with us at home and we had a great time. And we started.

You put. You put Matt up in your own house. Like he was.

Just shaved his hair, it was a mess.

He had the same haircut as Scott within the first 24 hours.

That's so funny.

So we had a great time and everything worked from there on. Then we sort of started running it. We trialed it and then we put.

It on and it was really good because we were lucky enough to be the first ones to be able to use it. But all of our friends within the industry who were also part of the next style group, were able to, you know, sort of look at it and see it and touch it and go, oh, my gosh, I can't wait to have it. So it put us in a really lovely position.

Yeah, maybe in a way. Two and a half years on, though, where it's really come it now, there's, I think there's 48 companies signed up on Service Titan here from memory does come with challenges. Right. But the, the, the upside or the optimistic side, where I want to be is that it's far better than where we were. And that's really important for people to understand, hey, we got to. It takes a bit to get there, but when you get there, you start to see some real amazing stuff. So they've got to hang in there. In dealing with everyone I've dealt with at Service Titan, they've been absolutely fantastic. And I'm not blowing wind up your ass or anything. That's the reality. You talk to anyone that deals with Service Titan, the people that are trying to help them get to where they need to go have been freaking awesome in a company your size. That's really awesome.

Thank you. Thank you. We definitely pride ourselves on customer success. I'm really happy to hear that. So we are actually having our service Titans first ever World of Titans event at your shop in Sydney, Australia hosted by the incredible Ellen Rohr. This is going to be happening April 3rd and 4th again in Sydney of this year if folks listening to this choose to attend and they can check out the link in the show notes to register if you're interested. What can they expect to hear and learn from you two?

They'll definitely learn about great culture. What they will notice when they walk around here. Actually I'm not going to even tell that. I'll tell you off there and you can guarantee you they'll all say the same thing. But what they will get here when they turn up, they'll see sunshine, a lot of sunshine. April, maybe not but they'll meet a great, a fantastic team that really loves what they do.

Guarantee they'll have a laugh before they walk out the door.

Oh my gosh.

And we, we're really, we host a lot of people for our business and we don't, we don't hide anything. We're an open book here. You not knock yourself out, ask any questions. If we, if we can answer, we'll answer them. There's, there's no holy grail here. We all know what we've got to do to get to get to where we want to be.

And I think that's the, the most amazing part of know being with Scott and being around Scott is that he just loves to share. He's not here. He wants to grow the industry and he'll help you grow your business even if it's next door to us. He doesn't care. That's how he's always been and he, he just in it for the people.

In saying that we're all in the same industry, we're all better to share success so everyone becomes better and the better we all become, the better the industry becomes and then we can employ better people. The secret here is to get other people to understand that because the more people understand that and understand we're not competitors, we share similar customers but we're not competitors. We're all in the same boat together. There's nothing sadder and I see this a lot, we've always been a well priced company, right. And there's nothing sad when you see people get to 50 or 60, they've been for through one or two marriages got no money. And it's all for one, really, one thing, no belief in their, in their, their business or their industry or themselves. And that's so sad. And this job's hard. You deserve to be to win and to give your family and your friends or whatever and to give back if you can. They have to learn to do that. And that's all comes on price point and beliefs.

Very, very well said. Scott and Vicki, thank you so much for joining me on Toolbox for the trades today. Thanks for sharing your story and your incredible chemistry with each other and just your light heartedness. I loved it, man. You guys are great. Thanks again for being on Toolbox for the trades.

Thank you.