The Achieve Podcast - Bubba Thurman (Baker Brothers Plumbing Air & Electric)

Welcome to another episode of the Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs, those who are building meaningful businesses, shaping their industries, and having an impact. I'm Taylor, your host, and today excited to be joined by Bubba Thurman, the president of Baker Brothers Plumbing, Air, and Electrical, and you can find them at bakerbrothersplumbing.com. Now, Bubba, we were just talking off screen, but Give us the backstory real quick on how you got into this space and how long you guys have been doing this because it's been a while. And thank you for joining us.

Yeah, we've been around for over 80 years. We started in 1945, and wow, I am the first non-family president of Baker.

Okay.

And so Jimmy was the grandson, and he— I worked with him, gosh, for 13 years. He and I worked together. I was a senior VP over operations And he sold the company back in 2017, and then he kind of phased out this last February. And so I took over, but it has a long-standing history in our market, primarily plumbing. We brought AC on 13 years ago, and then we brought electric on 8 years ago. And so they have a really strong reputation, long history doing plumbing, kind of pioneers. They did water sewer testing, and they were the first to go to market here with a camera. Like, that was, uh, you know, obviously revolutionary back then to think you could look inside of a sewer line. Um, common practice today, but I think we've always kind of been on the cutting edge. Um, Jimmy in 2008 bought the company, and he went to college. He was different than the rest of his family. He was also a master plumber, but he knew a whole lot about marketing, and We also were the first to go to market with TV radio here in our market in Dallas.

Okay. And so, and how big is the team in the organization now?

So we have a little over 400 employees currently. Um, our annual revenue is— last year we were at $105 million in revenue, and we do nothing but own service. We don't do any new construction. Uh, we don't do any commercial. We do residential service only.

Wow.

So that's impressive.

And so as you guys have been growing and hitting multiple industries now that you're expanding, what would you say is actually driving the growth for the organization the most?

Well, um, I would just say it's a little bit of two things. One, opportunity. Obviously we're in a great market. Uh, Dallas-Fort Worth is, last I heard, a little over 9 million all in. And so a lot of growth here, a lot of people moving here, and I think we just kind of paced ourselves to grow with it. Um, there was a little bit of a revolutionary risk in '08. We had a little bit of a setback in the economy, and I think Jimmy, um, who is a risk-taker, he's, he's a great dude, great leader, but in '08 everybody was laying people off in the trades. Well, he was hiring them up, and that kind of drove him to go to market on TV, radio, because he felt the pressure. I got to get calls because he was just hiring guys, you know, because they were available. And as you know, there's a lot of discussion around hiring tradespeople. It's difficult and all that. So he was hiring up people like crazy, and I think that was very important, um, in terms of the growth because we were 25 to 27% year over year for a long time. Um, I would say, you know, since '22 that slowed. Uh, we're still growing but not at the pace that I think any of us would like. But, you know, that's kind of across the, the whole country. Yeah.

And what would you say is, is feeling harder than it should when you think about that growth?

Yeah, I just think there's two factors. One is, you know, we've, we've experienced a lot of, um, challenges with the economy. And, you know, we try to focus around here— like, I want to say that with an asterisk because we don't focus on what we can't change. Like our mantra is, you know, every customer, every call, every day. And so we try to go, hey, what do we control? But just if you sit back as a business leader, you go, okay, what are the factors? We've had some mild winters, we've had some, you know, we've had fewer demand calls just because of, you know, environmental factors. It's not been Dallas hot for 5 years. And then obviously when you talk about, you know, just what's going on in the world, Um, I think that impacts people in terms of, number one, hey, can I fix it myself, you know? And then there's a little bit of a push toward, you know, repair over replace. That affects our economy quite a bit. And so we've slowed down, but we're blessed to still keep growing even with headwinds. So that's awesome.

That's impressive, especially that big of an organization to keep growing.

Yeah, last year I told someone, they go, hey, what's it been like? And I said, well, it's like I was 16 years old again and I was digging in the seat cushions trying to find a dollar's worth of gas and change growing up. And I think a few people could relate to that back in the '80s, but it just felt like, you know, you had to put more effort, you know, and that's not always bad. It kind of leans you up as an organization. I feel like we work harder than ever. For, you know, like a 5 or 6% growth year. It just seemed like, you know, every day was a challenge. We're just trying to get calls. We're, we're doing everything in our power. We're going, hey man, you need to tell all your friends and neighbors. We need to do the best job of any company that has ever been in their home. You know, now is not the time to be a B-player. And so we kind of had a lot of those narratives in a tough market. How do you keep winning? Because I think you can. It's just harder. I love that though.

Lean times makes you put more effort in and just runs cleaner, like you cut out.

Absolutely.

Yeah, the bad habits, a little bit more rewarding too, to be honest.

Yeah, 22 kind of spoiled everybody in, in our market, you know. I think across the country, think about it, there's a perfect storm for businesses like ours. You got people working at home all day, and so they hear everything that's wrong And there was a lot of money injected into the economy, so people had money and they were at home and they had awareness of, you know, the toilet that ran that they ignored or never heard before, you know. And they definitely didn't want to be uncomfortable in the climate of their home. So I think that drove a crazy amount of business in 2022.

That makes sense.

Really all through COVID, it wasn't just that one year. It just seemed like it was just kind of coming to us, you know.

Yeah, I can see that. Now, looking back for you personally, what would you say— what turning points have had the greatest impact on how you run the organization?

Um, I just think, you know, just personally, if you're asking just how I'm built as a leader and how I've experienced things, I always go back— the guys get tired of athletic analogies, You know, but I think you have to constantly pay attention to how you're doing. Sports is feedback. I mean, I was a baseball player, so 0 for 3 was feedback. You know, 3 strikeouts in a game was feedback. You're going, okay, this isn't going well. I got to get in the cage and figure something out. And I think it's the same in business. I think you have to pay attention to the areas where you get feedback. You know, you look at the P&L, you look at labor, you look at materials, you look at customer reviews. You look at individual technicians' rating, you know, how are they doing in the home, uh, call center close rate. So I think as a leader, it's forced, you know, the tougher things have gotten, we've had to dive into areas that maybe in '22 when you're just beating your budget by 25%, you, you know, I always tell people when you go above your goal, it covers a multitude of sins. Like if you're a million dollars ahead, you don't see things But when you're like fighting to get there, everything gets exposed a little bit and you go, hey, we're giving up 2% here, or maybe even not 2%, maybe it's a half a point somewhere else. And I think so as a leader, I think it's that intentionality each day to go, hey, what are the drivers of our business? And am I paying attention to those things? Because I think you can swing the pendulum. That's one of the challenges. You can get so culture-driven that everybody's happy and everybody loves being here, and you can go broke. Or you can get hyper, you know, focused on profitability and you lose the culture. So I think you've got to look at all these different verticals and go, you know, it's not just dollars and cents. We want people that get fired up to come to work here because that translates into great service in the home. And so I think you just have to— if I said one thing to answer your question, I'd say you got to pay attention.

That makes a lot of sense. I like that a lot. Now, this next question is a two-part question for you. When it comes to your outreach, your messaging, your marketing systems, first, what do you feel has been working really well to get and keep customers?

Well, I think it's our brand promises great service. We're driven by three core values: trust, quality, and care. Those kind of create a pathway for us to have conversations internally. Like, if you don't accomplish those 3 things, or if you violate one of those 3 things, you're going to have a coaching session immediately. And so I think what that leads to is customer loyalty, because no matter what happens, we're going to do the right thing. It— I mean, we've given money back, honestly, when the customer wasn't truly deserving. If you just want to be like judicial about it, like we didn't do anything, but we want to save our reputation. Like, and I don't mean that in a, in a phony way either. Like, I don't want a fake review. I want to know that we're actually that good. And so I think that translates to loyalty. And so we have just a ton of repeat business, like That's what stays us during these tough times. I mean, to be honest, it's the people that have been doing business with us for a long time. We have 30-year customers and, you know, they don't think about who to call. They just call us. And so we have 20,000 members who are, you know, part of our family plan. And so, yeah, when calls are light, you can call the family people and go, hey, do you guys need us for anything? You know, we're light on calls. We got guys that need work today and they'll go, yeah, I've been meaning to call you. I've got this light that's flickering or whatever, you know. And I think you get beyond how much does it cost and you get beyond why should I trust you. I think when you build loyalty at that level, it's kind of a no-brainer. You know, we all have brands that we trust that way.

Yeah.

So That's awesome.

So the second part of the question is, where do you feel like there's still opportunity or money on the table?

Um, so we just did a deep— I can't say too much on here, but we just did a really deep brand study in the market. And, and so we, we learned that we have a really strong brand. It's the number one brand in our market. And, um, we learned that there's 40% of the people who use home services in this market that don't have brand loyalty. They just pick whoever's available. There's no real, you know, they're not going, I gotta call this person, because there's some other great companies like in our market. And so we're sharing space with some great operators and, you know, well-led organizations. So it's very competitive. But I was just startled to see that there's 40% of people that don't care who they use, just fix my toilet. And I'm like, we've got to figure figure out how to go get them, you know. And I don't think the, the recipe changes. It's still great service, it's, it's transparency, it's, you know, do the right thing kind of mentality. But I think that it's a different age. Our demographic is pretty old, and I think that was kind of, um, I don't know. I think if I would have given a survey prior to the call we had with the market research specialist, I think we would have all guessed 55 would be our median, and it was actually 69. And so, yeah, and so I think that, um, there's advantages to dealing with older folks. They, they have, you know, usually financial stability, they own a home, etc. But we're missing out on a whole generation of potential customers. And so that's caused us to go to the drawing board and go, how do we connect with these people? Like, what? I think about my own son, you know. I was laughing because they just moved in a house, I guess like 3 weeks ago. And so we went and helped them move and everything. They have these big screen TVs, you know, that's critical, right, to newlyweds. So they had a 65-inch TV. They don't know how to hang it. I'm not offering. And so they, they hire this guy off of Facebook Marketplace. Guess what time their appointment was? 9 PM on a weeknight. They have no background check. They don't know him from Adam. But it was $150 or something to come hang their TV. My son was fired up. He goes, Dad, it's perfect. He said he hung it in about 10 minutes, and you know, it was perfectly level. He said he had the tape measure in his mouth. He was on a 2-foot ladder. He said, I've never seen anything so fascinating. And my wife's in the background dying because she's like, you don't even know where that guy was from. You know, she's worried about safety. And my son who's 27, his wife's 27, that wasn't even on their radar. Like, they just found a guy that could come at 9 at night. And I'm like, okay, I've got to shift my thinking around how people consume, you know, our advertising, or, you know, what is our strategy, how do we show up in the market. And I think probably out of that 40%, there's a lot of them 40 and under. Um, I think it— I think I saw where there's a massive increase in like 40-somethings buying homes, and, and we're just kind of not— that's not— that's never been our strategy, you know. We've always been kind of boomer-driven. And so, man, that opportunity is fresh. Like, it's, it's keeping me up at night. I'm going, okay, how do I, how do I connect We need to totally rethink, you know, marketing because you can't just shoot at one audience anymore. Yeah, it's fragmented. When, when you and I were kids— and I'm not saying you're as old as me, Taylor Baker Baker— but when I was a kid, there were 3 channels and I was the remote control. You know, mom and dad say, hey, go change it.

Yep.

And so to consume media the way I grew up, it was very limited. And we did have multigenerational TV shows that we watched. I mean, I remember like being in junior high and we would watch the same shit. Me and my mom and dad would sit in the living room and watch, you know, Gunsmoke. We were all doing the same thing. And now you got a kid on his iPhone, laptop, doing homework, watching TV, and it's nothing the parents are watching. And so it's completely 4 different media sources in one home and maybe 3 different audiences.

Yeah.

And so that kind of, you know, blows my mind. But I think there's opportunity there for us.

I can see that. That makes a lot of sense. Now, with all the talk and buzz around AI and automation, where have you found ways to utilize it internally?

So we're working with a company called Lace AI currently. Um, we're driving that to be, completely integrated by next week in our call center. And so, not replacing our humans, but, coming alongside. And, and I think that there's a lot to be said about what AI is doing in the industry. Like, I think it's going to be really disruptive in the next 12 months in terms of how customers figure out who to use. You know, Google's afforded us the opportunity to buy, you know, buy leads. And that's kind of been the deal for, for a long time. And I think AI is exposing like who you really are. I think you have to— you better get your game in order because there's no secrets. I mean, people can go get all your bad reviews on AI or they can go find out, you know, what complaints you have or, you know, and hopefully they discover that you're a really solid company. So I think, yeah, I just— I'm interested to see how it integrates in marketing. That's kind of something that I'm really interested in. I know we got Speed to Lead stuff we've been talking about, um, and, you know, every time I interact with it, it just blows my mind. Like, I, I've dabbled around with Claude AI a couple weeks ago, and I was like, What? How in the world did you just generate that in 5 minutes? That would have taken me 5 hours, you know, to, to get KPIs around it and to, to break it down into like, this is what you need to do, you know. So I definitely think AI is going to have an impact on home services. That makes a lot of sense. Especially, you know, faster than we think.

So true. So true. And I think there's still the element of like, you're gonna have the, the person going into the home. Yeah, they'll be utilizing AI to diagnose and do a lot of things.

Yeah. And we've seen technology like measuring rooms, um, doing heat loads. I mean, you can do a 3D model for a homeowner in 10 minutes at their kitchen table. And so you just think, golly, that's crazy, you know. You can, you can shape the house. Where's the hot wall? Where's the west? I mean, you can do things that we just couldn't do even 3 years ago.

Wow.

Generating bids. I mean, even, you know, to a homeowner, you can put all the data in about the home, how old it is, you know, how's the installation. You can create all these factors that AI obviously never forgets. And it's just pretty, pretty amazing tool.

It is. It is fascinating. Now, when you think about the next stages of the business, Bubba, what are you most excited about?

I'm really excited about the training that we have an opportunity to do. I think we've done an okay job, but we're really trying to get around kids that are coming into the trades. You know, I get real excited about just the quality of people that have been showing up. And I would say a lot of them are young, they're in their 20s. And we got guys that are opting for the trades over college and, you know, seeing it as a viable option to, to build a life, you know, to buy home and to make good money. And so, man, I just love being around— like, I've had this thought in my head forever, just how I can leverage that influence into the next generation. Like, I'm thinking about just how do I get 30 of these guys on a Teams call once a week and just talk about life, you know. So that fires me up, man, to see guys that are younger. Obviously we have guys that are retiring out, you know, and, and they've been in it for a long time. But I think there's a difference in the guys that are coming in now. I really do. Like, before, you saw guys going to the trades because they were a fourth-generation technician or, you know, it was a family history of doing that. And I think some guys fell into it because they didn't want to go to college. And I think now with people choosing that path, we have guys that are coming to us with a college degree going, hey, I want to, I want to go in the trades. Like, we have a guy here, he has a PhD in education, he got his license last year, he was a school principal.

Wow.

He taught He got his master's in education. He was an assistant principal. He got his PhD in education, and now he's an electrician at Baker Brothers. That's why.

So that's awesome.

Yeah, he's amazing. Like, you know, he's really good. He's one of our customer favorites.

And that says a lot about the organization too, that he came to you guys.

Yeah, he showed up. I couldn't believe it. I think he called me and he was like wanting to, you know, change career paths. And I'm like, well, you realize we start as an apprentice, you know, you have to be doing pretty well as a principal. Um, you know, how do you like $18 an hour? So, and he stuck with it, worked all he could, climbed the ladder, did install, you know. And so I think there's more of that, like, and we have young technicians that They got a college degree, they went and got a job making, you know, $60 grand and they just don't like it. They don't want to be in an office all day. And so they show up and go, hey, I went to college, but I want to learn the trades. And so, you know, and that's not the majority. Obviously we have a lot of kids that make that choice while they're in high school, but I'm excited about the new crop of guys coming into what we do. Um, not nothing, no shade on the old guys. The old guys have got us where we are, you know, they, they worked hard. But it's funny how we have to adapt as a company because they're, they're vastly different, man. If you looked at my guys that are over 50, their MO is work me all you can, you know, they have the overtime mentality. My young guys are like, hey, how can I get off at 4 every day? You know, I want to go see my kid play T-ball, or, you know, I don't want to work my life away. They, they're not, you know, as driven by money. It's more about, hey, do we care about you, and is your family important to us? And so that's a crazy transition that's taking place. That's awesome.

That's exciting to see that. I love that you're, you're, you're bridging that gap between the two generations.

So training them, we're trying to adapt as well. I think I started to say that, but like, we have to step back and go, how are we training them? You know, because they're very different learners. They use technology all the time, you know. And you come in here and we're, you know, we got a whiteboard in the training room and you're like, hey, we got to get like caught up. We got to interact on iPads and do some different things. That's all they know, you know. They've had an iPad in their hand since they were 3. A lot of them. Yeah, I would say unfortunately to that one, but it's the truth, you know.

So if you had to pick one constraint to focus on and solve over the next 90 days that would move the trajectory of the organization, what would it be?

Um, I would say the biggest constraint is getting calls, like qualified calls. Calls. Like, I think we, you know, we always go back to— and I could get— we could probably talk marketing for a whole hour, but at the end of the day, marketing to me as a business leader is I know how many calls I need every day. Like, I know what our target is, and it just seems over the past 3 years that that's become more and more difficult. You know, we can get leads internally, but you know, it's inspections. It's, it's— they're not really calls that we need to go get in the market. We need the repairs. We got to go get the, you know, the bigger calls. And I, I think that's two reasons. One, our market is so crowded, it's unbelievable. There's a new company popping up daily. When I drive home, I see a new wrapped vehicle and I'm like, who are they? You know? And I found out recently that we have nearly twice as many AC companies in Dallas as there are in Houston. And Houston's, Houston's bigger than Dallas. And so it was kind of a wow, the market's flooded. So how do we get the edge? That's what I've got to solve. And what I've been on an absolute warpath campaign is we have to be obsessed with being the best at answering the phone and knocking on the door. Like, we got to be, we got to be top of mind, top of market. Because, you know, the word of mouth thing, it gets thrown away like technology's replaced it, but it hasn't. If you look at the data, we're still getting a big number of calls from somebody that has service. It's so amazing. They tell their friends, neighbors, and family.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that's our, you know, our advantage. I think there's a, you know, when the wind shifts from the south to the north, there's this calm. And I think we're kind of in the calm. What's Google going to do next? Is there another disruptor that we don't know about yet? Because, you know, I don't know how long you've been in the business, but there was a time where literally I could manipulate Google. Like, I could turn it up and, and I would see the phone start ringing more within an hour. And now you might just throw money away. It might happen, it might not. PPC is kind of— it's not, it's not the shiny new object anymore, you know. And so for me, the next 90 days, we've got to be really good at organically generating calls because we're committed. I mean, we're spending a lot of money out there doing traditional. We do TV, we do radio, we do, you know, PPC, we do LSA, we're in digital, we're in streaming. But I don't know that we've done all we can in organic, like being present communities, sponsoring local events and charities and football teams and whatever. Yeah, you know, showing up in the community stronger, I think, is our best thing that we can go do, you know. And I might tell you something different in 90 days. Hey, we, we tried that really hard and it didn't move the needle. But you know, you can't change the marketing budget midstream. I mean, it is what it is. So, so that's what I just want to get guys on the road. I want to keep my promise to them that they can earn a good living here. Yeah, so that's, that's what marketing means to me. And I think that sometimes gets lost in translation. I got guys out in the parking lot every morning going Hey, I need calls, you know, and it's— it breaks my heart when we're slow and I go tell 5 guys they got to go home, you know, like I'm failing. So I got to figure that out.

So, but thank you for coming on and sharing your guys's story and what you're doing. And for those who want to learn more, want to reach out either to work with you guys or take part of the— your services, bakerbrothersplumbing.com. Anywhere else you want to send them, they can find you, find out more information.

Sure, they can reach out on LinkedIn as well. I love dialoguing around leadership. I'm doing a podcast Thursday with Pixie, and they're an AI company here in Dallas, and that's going to be a pretty cool conversation. But glad to meet you, and hopefully there's one sentence in there that brings value to somebody.

Absolutely. So thank you very much. A lot of good, a lot of good wisdom in that. And coming from a construction background, my dad's general contractor, and so the pains you talk about, yeah, I get them.

You understand, you got to feed those guys. Yeah.

So, and thank you to today's sponsors of today's episode: Achieve Fractional, which provides fractional executive leadership for growing businesses. And if you enjoyed the podcast, the conversation, share it with a friend, with a colleague. If you're not sure who to reach out to with any electrical, plumbing, HVAC needs, reach out to Bubba and the team and they'll get you taken care of. And we'll see you all in the next episode of the Achieve Podcast.