Steve Egner of Steve’s Plumbing in Lynwood, WA, shares how he had a record-setting month despite being in a COVID-19 hotspot.

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Powered by Success Group International. My name is Bob Houchin. I'll be your host. I'm also the editor of The Compass Magazine, a publication we at SGI created 15 years ago to share the incredible stories of resiliency, determination, and success our member contractors have achieved. For years, we at SGI have talked about launching a podcast to tell these stories through a different medium. And then roughly 2 weeks ago, the world seemed to turn upside down. The coronavirus had found its way to North America. We thought there was no better time than now to share these stories and insights our contractors have to offer. We can help others in our industry navigate these times of uncertainty. So welcome to our inaugural podcast. There'll be plenty more in the future, including more detailing how residential contractors are dealing with COVID-19. And hopefully before too long, we'll be back to focusing on the business of contracting rather than the world surrounding it. Until then, I hope you enjoy our show.

And we get across the same message and remind the men, you have to be the professional, you have to be the voice of reason, you have to be the presence of calm. And when they do that, then I'm getting back from my guys, hey, I'm Converted this repair into a tankless water heater. Hey, I'm going to be here the rest of the day. Those are good calls to get from your techs.

Welcome to the Successful Contractor Podcast, powered by Success Group International, a show for residential contractors about residential contractors. We chronicle business journeys, share insights, and celebrate successes in this wonderful industry of ours. I'm your host, Bob Houchin. On today's show, we're going to speak to Steve Egner of Steve's Plumbing in Lynnwood, Washington. Steve owns and operates his company along with his wife and business partner, Rachel. Lynnwood is part of the Seattle metro area, among the first and hardest-hit areas by the coronavirus. Steve will share with you what they're doing to provide a safe working environment and serve their community at the same time. Let's take a listen. I hope you enjoy. Steve, I can't thank you enough for your time. You know, you've been a great member and a friend of me and SGI for many years, and since 2006, right?

That's correct.

Awesome. So for those who haven't had the pleasure of meeting you or your lovely wife Rachel, could you share with everyone kind of the Reader's Digest version of your story with SGI? You know, how has your company grown over the years? Um, and kind of how many trucks you're running today.

Sure. Uh, we were, we were a sole proprietorship at the time. Rachel was admin, marketing, and childcare, and I was the sole plumber out there in the field. It got to the point where in 2006, at the age of 46, we realized we would continue to need more. The cost of our family alone were going to be more than I could earn, so we explored PSI, we, we joined in 2006 and never looked back. I recall that the year that we joined, our, our annual gross revenue was still under $200,000, and now our monthly gross revenue is almost always over $200,000. So in that period of time, we've changed from a 1-truck operation to now a 7-truck operation, 4 apprentices, 1 warehouse. 2 CSRs, and Rachel and I. So 13 employees plus ourselves, and we owe the roadmap to our growth and success to SGI and PSI. So we're happy to encourage and assist those as we've been encouraged.

Oh, that's great. That's great. Very kind of you to say, Steve. I wish, you know, we were just talking pure business today, but we're chatting because of the COVID-19 outbreak, and it's affecting so many, especially those in your community. Have you had any employees directly impacted?

Not yet.

Okay.

Not yet. So we're very fortunate, and we're taking measures in that regard, of course, with our company. But I've encouraged every single one of my employees to embrace this in all seriousness and protect themselves. So not just on the job, but off the job. And I've also requested— I've spoken to every one of them personally, but I've requested, if any of you have any doubts about the seriousness, then I would like you to come share your perspective and your views with me, and I'll share mine so that we can come to an understanding. Bob, if it came right down to it, if I had someone who wasn't taking the threat seriously and wasn't taking proper precautions at home, I would fire them.

Right, right.

That would be the end of it. That would be a cultural difference that I could not allow and I could not tolerate because I firmly believe that it poses a threat, and the attitude of that type of employee would pose a threat to the safety of everyone else in my company. So fortunately, among our small group, 13-plus Plus Rachel and I, we don't have any dissenters. We have people who are very serious about it, and fortunately they're all on board. We're all on the same page. I think that culturally that's really important.

Did you just have a big company meeting once it appeared that it was growing in your community and it wasn't just a foreign thing, it was here in the States as well, in Seattle? Did you have a company meeting to discuss it, or was it more of a one-on-one thing, or what did you do specifically?

We've done both, but specifically we have a culture of beginning every day with a team huddle. So we've always required everyone to come into the shop. We've since changed that as precaution of the CDC recommendations. We dispatch all of our people from home today, but in the beginning that was not the case. We were still meeting at the shop every day and discussing it as the news unfolded and how we would have this seriousness. Subsequently, I've followed up in conversation with all of our people, but Everybody was pretty much on the same page because— and not so much about the mechanics of taking precautions, but we were dealing with the rising hysteria.

Yeah.

And as technicians who are devoted to sales, our revenue is dependent upon their sales. Then with the rising hysteria, it became our mission to refocus the men every morning and adjust their attitude. I said, Our first responsibility is to calm our customers, is to peel them off the ceiling, get them into a relaxed frame of mind, and establish rapport, earn the trust, prove our professionalism, provide them options, and then close the sale. That's the process. We would refocus our men every day, and we would reiterate, it begins here with me, but it goes through you as representatives of the company. If you are not calm, you won't be able to calm a customer, and that's essential to any transaction. So we were focusing on moving our closing rates. And as a result of that adjustment due to the public hysteria every day, our closing rates actually went up more than 10% across the board. So they're doing really well. We're, we're getting fewer calls. I think we discussed that our call volume is down over 50%.

Yeah.

But with their closing rates, the men are actually keeping up. Now there are fewer opportunities. There's no more than 1 or 2 opportunities for each of our men each day, but they're embracing those opportunities and we're focusing their mindset. I mentioned, Early on, we had the ability to do that in person at our company meetings, but last week we changed to Zoom meetings. We just had everybody download the app, and now I can see everybody on my screen at the Zoom from my kitchen in the morning, or if I conduct it at the office, and we get across the same message and remind the men, you have to be the professional, you have to be the voice of reason, you have to be the presence of calm.

Right.

And when they do that, then I'm getting back from my guys, hey, I converted this repair into a tankless water heater, hey, I'm going to be here the rest of the day. Those are good calls to get from your techs.

Definitely, definitely. You mentioned precautions. Is there anything that you're doing out of usual? Maybe just re-emphasizing the need to wash hands or use hand sanitizer all the time? Obviously, you guys do shoe covers. Anything unusual or different than what you've done in the past that you're doing now?

Probably the biggest difference was with the cleaning products that we're accustomed to, Bob, and it was a big education for me. We've always used Simple Green. Simple Green smells great, leaves customer the signal that, hey, we cleaned their work area and we care. What we found out was that Simple Green is a common cleanser and it's not rated as a disinfectant. It's virtually ineffective against the coronavirus or any other virus or any other bacteria. So We, as quickly as possible, we scoured local sources. We found that on a scale that we needed for our company, the quantities just weren't available anywhere. So we located a product on Amazon that's rated against the coronavirus. It's virucidal and bactericidal. That's probably the biggest change. We've never actually worked with a disinfectant before. But now the men all have the bottles of disinfectants. And in addition to the things you mentioned, the shoe covers, Tyvek suits when the customer calls for or when the technician feels they're necessary, gloves and respirators on every job. They've also got a bottle of disinfectant in their hands, and they're going to completely disinfect any fixtures they work on, any work areas in the bathroom, all surfaces before and after they're done. So the, the use of the product is, is different. We've always just sprayed a few squirts of Simple Green on a cloth, wiped down a fixture, wiped down a floor, Moved any smudge or anything off, and that's not adequate.

Right.

We've, we've learned you've got to spray that stuff on the surface and keep it wet anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes depending what the product rating is. So for our exposure, I'm talking about legal exposure, I, I don't know what that might be, but we are doing our dead-level best in all seriousness to prevent the spread of the contamination and infection, and I do not want us ever to be the cause of bringing that into Absolutely.

We've talked about how, you know, the field's been impacted. How about how you're answering the phones? I mean, if people are calling in, they're looking for service, but has the scripting or the conversation changed much to reassure people so that you don't get cancellations afterwards? You know, someone tells a friend or a family member, oh yeah, I'm having a plumber come out, and they say, oh, you're crazy to do that. Now, so what are you doing on the front end when people call in to kind of reassure them that you're taking extreme precaution to be safe and sound?

When people call in, we've added a couple of questions to our approach where— well, not questions. First, we're making a statement. We're just letting people know we're taking all universal precautions. Everything that the CDC has recommended, we're following. We're arriving in masks and gloves. We disinfect our areas before and after. But we're also following that information with a question. Has anyone in your home experienced illness, or is anyone showing symptoms of any illness at this time? And as you know, we're asking questions of customers who may or may not be entirely honest.

Sure.

But the fact is, they still need plumbing services. And even if someone had an infection, we did have a customer, for instance, last week who called in and said, I need this service for my My water heater. I need this to work, but my daughter came home with the flu. It has not yet been determined whether or not it's the coronavirus. She'll be in her room and the water heater is in the garage.

Oh.

So we accepted that call and I informed my technician who was assigned to that call, he has a choice. One, you have a choice not to do that if you want to. On the other hand, if you want to do the call, then I want you To go in with full precaution. I want you to, even if it's a garage, shoe covers, Tyvek suit, rubber gloves, respirator, and take care of that water heater exchange, whatever it needs. He was happy, the client was happy, and hopefully the little girl recovers.

Yeah.

We like happy endings for everybody, but that's our process. The fact is, as an employer, I can't order my men into an unsafe situation. I do firmly believe that we are first responders. I've always felt that way about the trade for as long as I've practiced it, and I've extended that to my crew. But at the same time, there could be a situation where one of my men might determine, hey, this is not safe for my family. And certainly, a single 22-year-old living on his own has a different family situation than the guy with a pregnant wife and a 3-year-old daughter.

Sure.

And so we've got to cover all those bases and realize that keeping our employees safe, Keeping our clients safe is a priority, and we're adopting new measures literally day by day throughout this. So we didn't start out with all of these things. These are a cumulative effect of about 3 weeks of preparation.

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We knew that we had to do something, and my tendency in a situation like this when I'm under pressure is to find some action to take. And so we decided the simplest thing that we could do was to put up brief videos explaining our perspective, explaining our precautions. We wanted customers to know We're still in business. We're still going to serve you. These are the precautions that we're taking against the spread. So we produced three videos in short, just to let people know what those precautions were, demonstrate them physically, show them my men dressed in their protective gear, simply explaining that we're sanitizing work areas before and after, and also letting people know that we are an essential service. If their sewer is clogged, if their water service is interrupted, or their water heater fails. That can make the home anywhere from uncomfortable to unsafe to occupy. So we are first responders. We are an essential service, just getting out those. But what's incredible, Bob, is the— what we've spent on those videos, those 3 videos. Let's see, those 3 videos, we invested and boosted $500.

Mm-hmm.

You can do that on Facebook. Exactly $500. 3 ads where the videos were viewed over 7,000 times.

Wow.

That's 3 videos that were, 2 of them were 30-second videos. One of them was a minute video, minute and a half video. For $500, I got 7,000 complete playthroughs. And Facebook's wonderful with their, their details that they give you on the backend because it shows, hey, this video was played from front to back over 7,000 times. That comes out to 7 cents per viewing per client who watched our video.

That's great. That's remarkable.

And they're inexpensive. They're, hey, I look at them and I think it's corny. I don't like to listen to my voice. I don't like to see me gesturing there, but people found those reassuring. And at the same time, I called our brand managers, Ray Segrin and Monica Ballard, and I said, what can we do? We have a radio presence. Is it possible to react swiftly on this and get out a message about the coronavirus and the precautions that we're taking? They had me to the radio 2 days later. We're down at the studio recording new spots. Those spots are— that's what we're advertising right now. No offers, no sales, no pressure, nothing at all except information on what Steve's Plumbing is doing in light of the coronavirus to protect our clients. And that was inexpensive. We already had the radio budgeted in.

Right.

So the only additional budget that we've added really is this $500 expense for Facebook, and that's an incredible value.

Oh yeah.

And you can target demographic, uh, Facebook. It takes a little, a little work, but some people already have social media managers that will do that for them. But it's inexpensive. Uh, it's very effective. We've actually had people call from the Facebook ads. We, I repeat, Bob, we're not seeking new clients. We just want to reassure our base. One, we're still here. We have a right to be here. And we are still here and serving, and we're protecting you as much as we're protecting our people.

Right, right. You mentioned your base. Are you doing much outbound calling to try and fill those gaps in your call schedule?

Well, fortunately, we're a Diamond Club culture, a maintenance agreement culture, and we always have been. We've got close to 1,400 members currently. This is our inspection season. We always schedule those for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday first call, so for literally 2 and a half more months, I have the schedule full on those days with starting calls for all of my men. So that's a blessing, right?

Yeah.

There's no other way to put that. That's just a fortunate result of the fact that we have a maintenance agreement Diamond Club culture. If we didn't have that, we'd be SOL, Bob. That just sucks, but that's the truth of it. So now we've, we've doubly emphasized to the men, these Diamond Club inspections that you're going on are bona fide opportunities. We've supplied our men By mailing to these customers in November and December, we mail out a coupon through Denise Schneider at Minuteman Press. She designs a coupon that's good only, only the day of the inspection.

Oh, okay.

So when we go through and we make a list of recommendations and the person says, yeah, I think I'm going to hold off and wait till my husband comes home, or I'm going to hold off and, you know, we're going to do this in the spring, well, I've got The coupon is dual coupon, $60 off repairs or $100 off a water heater of any kind.

Yeah.

I'm just going to have no choice but to put this $60 in my pocket, ma'am, because you're not going to be able to use it tomorrow.

Yeah.

I've given you 6 recommendations that you know need to be done. Why don't we apply it toward one of them? And that way you get to keep the $60. And so closing rates on Diamond Club inspections have gone as high and higher than ordinary calls. The men are viewing them as opportunities, and so they're following through. And that's, that's really been a lifesaver for us because everybody gets to start that out with a friendly face we've done business with before. We've got a work history, we know what we've recommended, we know what they need. But the coupon limiting the discount to the day of service, coupled with the fact that we're in Diamond Club inspection season, that has saved us.

I love that. I love that. Um, you mentioned, um, you know, every day has been a little different. You're constantly educating yourself. What are you doing to educate yourself? Is it just like everything— everybody else getting online and trying to see how the world's different and how you need to respond to it? Are you talking to other members? I know we've got a great group of members in the Seattle area. Are you talking to them? Are you talking to other contractors? What are you doing to kind of stay in front of this?

I'm a big advocate of Written news. I, I don't watch any television news. I hate it. Um, and I've instructed my men when they walk into a customer's home, if they hear CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, I don't care what it is, turn the damn thing off. I said, just ask your customer, I need your complete and undivided attention. And I look at that as attention dividing here at home, so we don't watch it. But I do read I love to read and I look at credible sources, verified sources of information. I look at this expanding across the globe. I look at how it's expanded with control and how it's expanded without control. And I've determined that control is better. Control is what we need. And so that's how I'm trying to inform myself. But there's information that comes surprisingly from customers. So of all the thousands of views of our videos on all the hundreds of likes on our page, we've actually had 4 negative responses.

Interesting.

One of those wouldn't allow me to reply at all. I just said, uh, if, if you feel— she just left a negative remark that I won't repeat here today. It was more profane even than I am usually. And, uh, and I just said, what would you suggest we do? And then she just replied, piss off, blocked me. But I actually had another guy, you know, okay, I'm, I'm interested in your viewpoint. What more would you have us do? And that guy sent me probably 5 medical papers.

Hmm.

And he sent me, and they're easy. Typically a medical paper starts out with a paragraph that summarizes the entire study. And then you go through and read all the evidence and then you can read the conclusion. So you can treat it like Cliff's Notes, just do the paragraph and the conclusion and scan the details in between. But that was extremely informative about the transmittability of this virus and what's different of how many thousand times more transmittable it is through aerosols. So when a person coughs, literally 2,000 times the contaminant in a person's exhalation as there is with the ordinary flu. So that was an eye-opener. Everything that I learned about disinfectants came from this guy because he actually sent me the government-listed, the EPA-listed, approved disinfectants that would be effective against the coronavirus. So I have that list.

Yeah.

I got that from a customer. Which was just, it began as a negative response. And he was of the mindset that we were not considering the seriousness of the threat. And I assured him, I said, I sense from your criticism of us that you think that we consider this to be not a serious threat. And I want you to know that nothing is farther from the truth. I told him, I read every word of every study and link that you sent to me.

Yeah.

We're implementing new measures daily, and I'll be implementing measures from the ideas that you gave me also. So I said, thank you. And then lo and behold, that guy shared our videos.

Ah.

And he shared our videos on his social media and said, I love these guys.

That's great.

And, uh, hard to say, but that was from a customer. And so far that customer has given me more solid medical information from the medical field, uh, studies from the outbreak and how it was treated in China, in Italy, In the United States from the CDC, information from the EPA, credible information that we've employed now in our company. These are measures that we take every day. I don't know what the next new thing will be, Bob. Oh yeah, in fact I do, I do. So Rachel and I are sitting in the kitchen yesterday trying to think, what can we do? Should we do another video? Should we establish any other policy? Well, what if Our governor, Jay Inslee, just put everybody on a shutter-in-place lockdown except for essential services. So what if we just called out to each of our customers on our way to their job and asked, is there anything we can do for you?

Oh.

Is there anything we can bring you? We're gonna pass by multiple grocery stores on the way over. We're gonna pass by pharmacies. And lo and behold, I saw an article just this morning of a company down in San Jose who's employed this, and people are even stopping by to pick up up pharmacies, pharmacy prescriptions for the elderly, or a gallon of milk, a half dozen eggs. Maybe it's a box of light bulbs from Lowe's or Home Depot. I don't know.

Yeah.

But whatever it is, we're going to give each of our guys $100. We're going to have the guys, in an effort to establish a relationship and rapport with the clients, ask the client, is there anything I can stop and get for you on my way? We understand that you've been sequestered by law, and so you have to have a plumber out to your home. We just want to make this a productive trip. My employer has given me a small amount of money. I can purchase some immediate necessities for you, and if you would like me to do that, then it'll just take me a few more minutes, but I'll still be at your home. We are literally implementing that today.

Wow.

I talked about the guys just this morning. It's outside of plumbing. Now we're a We're a commission compensation shop, so I can't just lay down an order like this, but my men seem to be on the same page. We understand that it's important to earn the trust, establish rapport with that customer.

Yeah.

How can we do that? Well, here's something we're not gonna charge for. We're gonna buy you a couple of gallons of milk and some eggs. It's gonna be a little over $10, $11. Get reimbursed for that in cash. You know, we're not gonna be able to put it on invoices, But we can take payment through PayPal or any other way. We're just trying to find ways that we can be useful here in the community. And first of all, we want to be not harmful, but secondly, we want to be useful. And how can we be useful beyond just the definition of our plumbing skills? So that's an idea we implemented today.

Interesting.

We'll, we'll see how that goes. We realize, yeah, there are Half a dozen different ways this could explode on us. Well, right. Every day, every idea has some measure of unpredictable risk, right? So we're going to try this one and hope it works out for the best.

That's fascinating. I'll be very interested to hear how it goes, but it's a great idea. It's a great idea. I mean, talk about building rapport right away when you show up with eggs at someone's house.

There you go.

So, you know, we obviously all hope, you know, this doesn't last much longer and life returns to normal very soon. Are you thinking at all, you know, long-term about how you can ramp things back up, or are you just kind of taking it a day at a time and one challenge at a time?

Well, we're taking it a day at a time, Bob, but I'm not holding off on anything. We're continuing our training expenditures. Weekly professional training for our entire crew. We've always done that by Zoom, so that's really easy to do even while the technicians are at home first thing. We have huge training investments for 3 of our apprentices scheduled, uh, for the spring, and I tend to follow through on those.

Yes.

We just purchased, uh, 2 brand new trucks with the Heiser shelving 14-foot box on Isuzus. Those are about $75,000 apiece. I bought 2 of those. I just bought a vehicle that'll be used by myself for the time being, but we intend to grow to the point where we have a manager in place for what will soon be 8 technicians and then 9 in 2021. So you can tell my budget, we've, we've got our budget and we're, we're driving it. And we had equipment that we needed to fill the goals on those budget, and we're gonna buy that and we're moving forward. And so I'm not, I'm not betting for or against anything. I want this to end as soon as possible, but when it does end, I don't want to be found flat-footed. And then found out I delayed necessary purchases by months, or my technicians are not as trained as I need them to be. We're continuing with all of the goals with which we began the beginning of the year. That has not changed. We're not drawing back anywhere, and we're actually looking for opportunities where we might increase our market presence.

I love that. That's great. Well, Steve, I can't thank you enough for your time, your insight, and your contributions to SGI, which have been many. Hey, have a great rest of your day. If there's anything we can do to help you and Rachel, please let us know. So take care. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Bob. You and your family be healthy.

All right, thanks, Steve. That's Steve Egner of Steve's Plumbing in Lynnwood, Washington. Thanks for listening to the show. If you feel like you have a great story worth sharing that would also help other contractors, email me at bhouchin@yoursgi.com. You've been listening to the Successful Contractor Podcast. Contractor Podcast, powered by Success Group International.

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