You might have guessed, not all plumbers are equal.
In fact some are so different it can be hard to get your head around.
Why is it that some plumbers are running around like headless chickens?
Working all hours and only just making ends meet at the end of the month.
Yet on the other hand, some plumbers like Charlie Mullins from Pimlico Plumbers go on to develop significant multi-million pound businesses, where they are personally able to extract copious amounts of personal income each and every year.
Do you think it’s down to how good they are as a plumber? How much experience they have or how many qualifications they’ve been awarded?
Unfortunately, as unfair as it might sound, money doesn’t really move for those reasons. It has little to do with these things and much more to do with the behaviours, habits and thought patterns which they fiercely adhere to when running their plumbing business and conducting themselves personally..
Here are seven mindset traits of the UK’s wealthiest plumbers.
1. They understand what business they are in
The first secret of the UK’s wealthiest plumbers is that they truly understand what business they are in.
They’re not in the plumbing, heating or renewable energy business.
No, they are in the ‘money getting’ business.
This means whilst their business has to be competent (and ideally very competent) at delivering services to customers, the bulk of their ‘personal’ effort and energy is directed towards the getting and retaining of customers, and finding how to make the maximum amount of profit from these relationships.
I’m not saying that the services you deliver aren’t important, they are.
But given the choice between exceptional plumbing skills with little or no marketing or referral system, or adequate plumbing skills with exceptional marketing and referral system, the latter will win every time.
If you’re unsure about this, just look at the large national companies which make the most money in this industry.
Are British Gas engineers really that much more skilled than everyone else?
2. They understand the difference between a ‘sale’ and a ‘customer’
Most plumbers go about their day-to-day business focusing on completing jobs which they can get then get paid for. As and when the need arises, they focus on getting new jobs or sales.
When there’s plenty of work around they can get pretty choosy too.
“I don’t want to do this job or return that phone call for a leaky tap because it’ll only be 100 quid, I could earn more doing a boiler swap”.
Now, firstly, there’s nothing wrong with this attitude. If all you want is a job, then it makes sense to focus on higher value work.
But if you’re the owner of a plumbing business, then the real money is not in the individual sale but the opportunity in the long term relationship.
The wealthiest plumbers understand that the true profit can be found in the relationship with the customer. It’s not in the first, second or even third sale. but the long-lasting relationship cultivated over the next few years or even decades.
Further to this, all of the referrals that satisfied customers will naturally bring into your business too.
3. They work ‘on’ the business not in the business
As depicted in Michael Gerber’s famous business book called E-Myth, the number one reason why so many small plumbing companies fail to get off the ground is because of the way that the owner perceives his or her role within the business.
In the vast majority of cases, starting a plumbing business comes as a result of being a plumber and taking a leap of faith to go out on your own. Keen to impress and excited by your new venture, your standards are high, commitment is strong and as the business grows, customers start flocking.
However, you soon realise there’s more work than you can handle.
Making the transition from technician (the plumber, the heating engineer, the quoter) to the person who works at growing the business can be very difficult.
The great plumbing business owners understand how to use predictable and repeatable systems and processes to hire staff and have them complete the work to the same high quality standard which they would have achieved themselves.
4. They set and make goals, and continually track how they are performing
As George Harrison claimed in his song Any Road, ”if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”.
The problem is that so many plumbers run their business with their feet on the ground going through the motions. Travelling from day to day, plumbing job to plumbing job without any careful consideration as to some sort of ‘bigger picture’ plan.
They might start out with a plan or at least some dreams but as the months and years pass by it’s far too easy to lose sight of where you’re going to.
The wealthiest plumbers know exactly where they’re going to with specific detail and clear milestones which can be easily tracked.
Decide exactly where it is you’d like to get to and closely track your performance quarterly, monthly or ideally even weekly. Then regularly review your goals and make course correcting changes quickly and nimbly.
You’ll soon find the goals just take care of themselves.
5. They make the customer the beating heart of the business
I know you’ve heard of the saying “the customer is always right”?
I’ve never used to get on with the statement, because as you well know, the customer is often wrong. Sometimes, terribly wrong, as we all are at times.
But I’ve learned over the years, the saying doesn’t always mean in the literal sense. It can be about perception.
The most successful plumbers don’t see the customer as a necessary evil in the business, who needs to be tolerated and kept in their place. They in fact build their whole business around them.
Afterall, if there are no customers, there is no business.
This can be hard to articulate, because I’m not talking about asking your customer to call the shots and do whatever they ask, whenever they ask it.
I’m talking about letting the customer decide what they want based on real evidence.
A practical example of this might be about how you answer the phone.
For many plumbers, being on a job means that answering the phones might not always be possible.
The caller can leave a message and you’ll ring them back later in the day or tomorrow. But if by answering the phone within 3 rings, means you win an increased percentage of new jobs, then you restructure your business to accommodate this ‘truth’.
If answering the phone isn’t convenient, then you structure the business so that someone can answer the phone on your behalf by hiring an office administrator or employing a call answering service, etc.
6. They are disciplined in their routines, habits, and expectations
If you were looking for quick hacks or tricks that will suddenly and miraculously make your company successful, you’re probably already feeling disappointed.
Like each item on this list, the things that work are often easy to understand and possibly easy to do occasionally. But the mastery of doing these things consistently on a daily basis is very difficult, hence why so few plumbers become financially independent.
The great Jim Rohn famously quoted that “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”.
Having a good daily routine might include: getting up at 6am, doing exercise, meditating, eating well, working on your marketing, writing newsletters, reviewing financial strategy, courting media appearances, entering awards or building relationships with your best referral partners or suppliers.
Whatever you deem to be on your ‘list of tasks’, what would happen to your success if you carried these out every single day without fail?
However rigorous it may feel, it pales in insignificance compared to the pain of waking up one day realising you had every opportunity to build an amazing company and free your family from any financial worries… but you never did.
7. They dig their well, long before they are thirsty
I’ve often talked about the comparisons between farming and hunting when it comes to business.
Hunting is feeling a hunger pain in your stomach and then deciding to go and find food. Whereas farming is starting the process of planting, cultivating and harvesting food long before you ever need to eat.
The very worst time to attract new customers is the moment you absolutely need them. It’s like they can sniff out the desperation.
The most successful plumbers are continually working on ‘priming the pump’. They put long-standing marketing activities in place which pay dividend months and sometimes years into the future.
A practical example of this could include building a database or list of customers and prospects and having the means to communicate by email or even physical letters in the post.
The longer they work on growing the list, the more potential value it will contain.
Imagine that every time you need to bring in some cash into your business, you could just create an offer, send a series of emails and generate sales on demand.
FREE Review of your plumbing website and marketing
Getting a plumbing website designed and built is a fairly straightforward process.
But getting that website to consistently and predictably bring in new customers month after month isn’t so easy.
If you’ve ever given it go yourself, you’ll no doubt have experienced the difficulty. Getting anything working investments of money and time to figure out what works and what doesn’t
Thankfully, you have the opportunity to take an incredible shortcut.
We work exclusively with fast growing plumbing companies so we’ve already done the hard work.
You’ll get a ‘no holds barred, take no prisoners’ full review of your website and marketing to find out each of the things that are currently growing or slowing your business right now.
Reviews take time to prepare for and host so we can only do a small number each month.
