How Lawrence Snow grew from 1 truck to 18 Trucks over the past 5 years

The plumbing marketing profits podcast interviews with million dollar plus plumbing and HVAC business owners on how they market and grow their companies in today’s economy you’re directly from the most successful leaders in your business and discover what they are doing to keep their phone ringing trucks running and businesses with your host, Josh Nelson. Alright well thank you for joining us on this episode of the plumbing and HVAC Marketing Podcast. Today we had the opportunity to interview Lord snow from Valley plumbing towers and see what’s amazing storey how he went from running. Running a very very, very successful plumbing company in the Las Vegas market sold went into consulting for several years was a well known consultant with que se and a couple years back decided he was going to jump back in start his own company and has grown it from 01 man operation with him and his son to now over 18 trucks and growing on a very consistent basis in the Salt Lake.
City Market and has also grown through acquisition in in Texas as well. So and on this interview, he shares some great insights on how how he’s made that a reality how it keeps his phone ringing, how it keeps the trucks running, and how he keeps his business booming. Check it out. Hi, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Allison and I’m here with Lauren snow, the owner of Valley Plumbing and Drain Cleaning towers plumbing and see what’s company down in Texas as well as in Utah County. And so Lawrence, can you introduce yourself with us today? Alright, well, this is I’m Laura snow. And again, like Allison said, We own the three different Plumbing and Air Conditioning companies. Awesome. And so, Lawrence, I just wanted to thank you for joining us today. I have a couple of questions for you. I’m sure a lot of people will benefit from that. And so I just wanted to maybe dive in briefly. Can you tell us how you started first Valley and then how you acquired see woods and then after that you acquired towers.
Yes, I was in the consulting business, I sold my business in Las Vegas and it was time to, I was tired of travelling and needed to kind of settle down a little bit. So we had the opportunity to with my son, Ronnie, and these, his husband that does has a marketing degree. And he works for us again now.
We used to have the opportunity to start a plumbing business. And we did and then after about about 767 years, from my consulting days, I was working with a company in Tyler Texas called see what’s company and they had the owners were going to retire and had a great opportunity. My son, my oldest son is he was a CPA and he worked for us as well. Was there a CPA for them and they came to him and said, Hey, we want to sell and, and became is it to help them get their business sold and I saw a good opportunity down there and, and I had a gentleman that used to When our company in Las Vegas is our advantage over there, and then we there a 65 year old company. And then we had the opportunity just right after that, three months after that to purchase towers plumbing, which is a company here in Salt Lake as well as you were part of the competition with that with us. Not a whole lot. They had a very isolated market. And they were 75 year old company and Jim and Jerry, were looking at looking to retire and we came together with terms and here we are amazing. And so I oversee all three companies and they’re all very different. But the cool part about towers and valleys because they are in the same market. We we honestly get a majority of everyone looking. I’m not sure you know if we have much competition even in the market because Valley has such a strong presence and then now towers, taking that market over where you want to cover the entire area. And so I guess that wasn’t very, very good.
Business move on on your end and I’m sure it’s paying off as you see any return on investment with that purchase it’s been it’s been very successful I mean there’s always always challenges and we we have fun with those challenges we move forward.
Yes When you look at the challenges with with towers plumbing It was 75 year old company, by the our company and there’s nothing wrong with the buyout by the our company, but very inexpensive by the hour. And we had the opportunity to get them, they didn’t have uniforms, we got uniforms, we replace their trucks, rebranded them, they had a website, but it was not maintained.
And since then, you guys have taken it over and like you said, it’s a powerhouse at this point. Yeah, and starting to really boom. So definitely a great purchase there. And so with your second or your your second business down in Texas, how is the travel or the commute? Do you spend a lot of time down there or do you just have a dedicated staff that you you know, you’re on the phone With more often or do you make the time to come and see them? We talked at least weekly and sometimes several times a week to the management down there and different people, different leadership people, and I mean I call technicians
dollar sales people down there, but I actually visit visit down there four or five, six times a year. Amazing. Okay, well just so that everybody has kind of an understanding how many trucks you run over at Valley.
Valley and towers are now together. And we we run 18 plenty sort of struck. So we have three excavation crews, which three people on a crew
so that’s again combined with the valley and towers together. Okay, and then over it. Let’s see. Let’s see what we have. We have excavation I’m sorry, we have air conditioning as well as plumbing there. On the plumbing side we run run five trucks on the air conditioning
We run to instal a cruise. And we have, I believe it’s six air conditioned text in one sounds amazing. And so how about anybody who may own a plumbing company right now and is looking to expand into the HP tech industry? Was that a challenge for you to learn or to manage? on your end? I hate air conditioning. Let’s just start off with that. It’s kind of funny to me in Las Vegas, we bought an air conditioning company as well. And they came to work for us after we bought the company. They moved into our facility. And they had no business it was springtime. It was March in Las Vegas. It’s beautiful weather. And the owner guaranteed them a full 40 hour week if they show up to work. So these guys came brought their board games and drove me absolutely crazy. So our challenges is to me air conditioning can be made
Very successful service agreements are the key salespeople the key as well. In Texas, we have a few thousand service agreements. So works out real well our guys keep busy year round, spring and fall is not real profitable, but you know, keeps our guys busy. We sell some systems in those in those times we getting ready for the winter, the winter or the summer weather. So if you want if you want to get into the architecture business, you gotta have service agreements and lots of perfect. And so then I’m getting into the marketing of their businesses. I work closely with Chad, we oversee you know, the entire account. And so can you kind of speak to how important it is to have someone that you trust in the office overseeing all of your marketing. I know that you know, as an owner of even one business, it can get very overwhelming. So how important Would you say that that that would be?
Well, I didn’t change my niece’s husband. workforce. When we first started our business moved to California.
Gonna be a family and then there he’s back now with us.
And with a marketing degree very, very early, you can even say that. Allison he he’s on. Yes, he’s on top of everything because sometimes it’s not easy the stuff he gets into, but it’s it’s things that they, they get into they understand. And it works extremely well
for them, but that, you know, it’s not something I know. So if I don’t know I, why do I need to be in Egypt? And you can tell me whatever you want to tell me I don’t understand I would understand it, but I believe it. But then Chad goes one more level and gets into the nitty gritty details. We can tell you by zip code where people are going from which technician does they can sell a water heater versus a toilet. You kind of get the idea and we know who who does and where. And it’s just with with somebody who Without marketing expertise, what at our size, you’ve got to have somebody 100% into it all the time. And that person could also be a sales manager for you as well. The trainer, definitely, I’m working closely with Chad, he definitely knows what he’s talking about. He brings reports to me that helps us then in return us, you know, situate our marketing or our PPC efforts, especially to target those specific zip codes that are doing better this year than they were five years ago. So he’s really really, really knowledgeable and I love working with him. So yes, that’s definitely a good person to have, even if, again, like you said, a marketing person or someone in the staff helping you with with those marketing avenues. So quick question for you. Besides internet marketing, we talked to all your branding, you know, you have your uniforms, you have your trucks, what other efforts are you currently doing to get your three names out there. So everybody understands.
who you are and they know to call you when they have something is interested in the marketing when you talk about the difference between the Utah market and the Texas market. You have to market them different. We’re big in TV in Texas. Don’t touch it up here. We used to a lot of radio down in Texas. We stopped that down there recently but we did a little radio up here. Didn’t see a spike in anything.
We do. We are doing quite a bit of direct mail down in Texas. Don’t do it up here as much. We get a pretty good sized pretty good bang for our buck down there with direct mail. So I mean, the internet marketing is really what put Valley plumbing on the map. Back to the yellow pages were phasing out we came in said no Yellow Pages 100% Digital. It paid off big time for us. Yes. And when we look at the tower side of things we did virtually no advertising. We had basically had to start over with a digital footprint because yellow pages of course wasn’t there. Now they still were in the
Yellow Pages. But that was obviously a real fun one.
Right now, I was just saying I mean with towers, the challenge was that the clientele was an older clientele. And they don’t necessarily use the internet to call you. So you had a lot of returning customers that understood that name, because they had the phone number, you know, maybe from a leave behind from the previous owner. But our challenge with towers was to try to give them a digital footprint. Give them a name on the internet. So that was a challenge. But it’s, you know, it’s been a year and a half now at this point. And so we’ve seen some great success there. And with value been with us for so long. It’s just dominating the area. So I mean, it’s very exciting working, you know, on the internet and the things with towers and with Valley, but down in Texas, I mean, you’re right, I work with Chad, and he tells me your TV’s doing well down there. There are other avenues and marketing. And then of course with h back been one of your services. It’s a completed
Yes, and again, it’s it’s kind of interesting with you about the towers, we have to market towers, different two different ways. The new customer who’s a digital customer, mon customer, which is a print customer. Yes. So it’s it’s working. we’re transitioning those those people over to do Josh, where do I do it slowly? It’s happening slowly. Yeah, it’s a slow increase. But I mean, it’s definitely giving you a wider perspective in the in the area. So that’s exciting. And so can you now speak to the different training opportunities that you’ve been a part of, or? I mean, you had mentioned that you’ve been a consultant in the past. So I know that you’re new, you know what you’re doing in your company, but have you also brought in outside perspective to help you?
Yes, we are a current member of the quality service contractors, which is part of the national pH CC. We use their their, their training programmes, we use our coaches. And you say, Well, why do you bring a coach and that’s what you used to do for a living because
Your son’s never listened to you and your your your technicians Now listen to the boss. So you bring some outside people in for a third party perspective. And it’s been a powerhouse for us. They’ve done a great job they they’re able to come here and do the do what we need to have done. We do a lot of outside training, we bring a lot of outside people in not just with a que se but other. Other people bring him in, do videos. We do all kinds of different types of training for our people. We know that if we don’t train, they don’t progress. And that’s we spend a lot of money and training for our office staff as well as our field staff. Definitely. And you mentioned you have 18 trucks and three excavation crews. So where were you when you first started? Was
we have dropped? Yeah. You know, it’s funny. You kind of get the idea of how digital works. We just throw it through digital after we hired Chad a month before we started our business. And our first month we did almost nine
Thousand cells, which for a first month in business on the digital side of things, it worked out very well. Definitely, I mean a now that that numbers way over that, but
it’s crazy how the internet can just bring that revenue in. And so you’ve been with us for several years now. Is there anything that you can tell a business owner who may be on the fence with releasing their digital efforts to a company like ourselves?
My experience for my coaching experience and consulting experience is, anybody can do digital marketing period. Anybody can I could do it. I wouldn’t be a regular job, but I probably could get that written up books. But you need to find somebody that’s good in the industry. That’s done the in the industry experience, knows what keywords to do, knows the demographics of who we work with, why why the people work, or working with us. I’ve seen other other
Companies digital companies out there that just plain throw stuff out there and see what sticks but then they don’t change it there. It’s a one hit wonder. And I just want to make sure that our customers see us consistently through every medium we have out there look and feel as the same.
And that’s, that’s, that’s key. If they look at every different piece of the puzzle, if it’s different, then you have five different companies and still one different company or one company is the same. So that’s that’s why you joined with companies like lemonade track Seo UUC seen him do it with other companies. You can call with other companies ask questions, feel free to give me a call. ask me any questions you want. That’s what I do for a living or just do for a living. Still do a little bit of it, but it helps us move forward. It helps them move forward and helps you
move us forward as well. Definitely your feedback. Thank you.
So, I mean, I definitely agree we we understand the market and then on top of that every market is different. I mean, like we said, even within the same market, your companies are different. So we are after a different demographic than we are, you know, with towers and we are with with Valley. So, it’s very important to understand the, you know, the company and also understand its strengths and weaknesses, its demographics, and then again, the market, you know, the people who are living and calling you So, definitely an important partnership between us and you guys. And so thank you for allowing us to take part in such a big, big portion of the success of your company.
It’s really fun watching watching how you guys do this, because we have two companies that are side by side competing with each other, but you don’t see them on the same. It. You don’t see on the same search. A lot of times you do on it on organic search, pay per click search, you don’t as much and that’s because we know that Valley has that big
excavation, Brandon and so we’re really no heavy with excavation on for Valley. And the four towers, we’re picking up all of those other searches for the smaller jobs or even some bigger ticket items, but not so much on the excavation like we do for Valley. And so that’s how we’re able to battle without driving your cost of
doing that not me, I you should watch it happen.
So, I mean, it’s always been a pleasure working with you. Thank you again for jumping on with us. And so I have one last question. Um, is there any Golden Nugget that you want to give to anybody who may be listening? You know, one of the biggest Keys to Success it was an entrepreneur class I went two years ago and there’s three business cases access. One is share the wealth, which is bonus programmes.
The other one was made Academy top priority. And the last one is hire people more knowledgeable than yourselves. I’m not a marketing person. I don’t want to be a marketing person.
And at the end of the day, that’s what you guys are for. So hire people more knowledgeable their sale, let them do the work, stay the heck out of it.
Sorry about that. That’s Robbie.
Let them do their job. Definitely. Thank you so much for jumping on with us, Lawrence. It’s been a pleasure working with your accounts is a pleasure having you as a client of ours, and I look forward to our continuous relationship in communication. Thank you.
I hope you get amazing value from that interview. If you’d like more ideas, strategies and techniques on how to more effectively market your plumbing HPC or Home Services business online, go to plumbing marketing.net there you’ll find interviews just like this and the opportunity to schedule a time with us to just kind of talk about your business and how we can help you implement similar strategies in your business. So plumbing marketing.net head over there now and I’ll talk to you soon